


Metal Jacket

by Ayulsa (execharmonious)



Series: Meat Jacket [2]
Category: Bubblegum Crisis
Genre: Breathplay, Consensual Violence, Cybernetics, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mind Meld, Motorcycle Sex, Priss Continues To Swear A Lot, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-01 19:42:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6533845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/execharmonious/pseuds/Ayulsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Sylia Stingray's nanotech future, lines, bodies and moralities blur.</p><p>A straight follow-up to Meat Jacket; probably incomprehensible if you haven't read it, but other than that, the chapters largely stand alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Little Knight Music

"Guess I'm gonna be driving us home, huh?"

Priss sat on the railing, dangling her legs over the night-black water. One of countless concrete islands that encroached into Tokyo Bay, like all the others this place was a mess: a home for Megatokyo's disenfranchised, uncared for by the government and unsupervised by the police, it mouldered under layers of graffiti and trash, the smell of cheap beer and rotting takeout brought to a fetid simmer in the heat. From where she sat, Priss could point out several places she'd marked personally with bulletholes: scars left by an old wound, whose hurts had faded over the years but which still remained, unchanged, a record of history.

This place never changed. But her life was changing. When she said _home_ , she didn't mean the trailer parked a few blocks from here, which, while new and paid for out of Sylia's seemingly bottomless pockets, was still a trailer home for one. Not that she'd ever had any problem with that: with all Sylia gave her she could have afforded her own apartment, but she liked the trailer. Tomorrow she could hitch it to a truck and be gone from this city. She never did, but having the option made her feel free.

But even if, to all appearances, she was alone tonight, she doubted she'd be going back to her trailer. There was technically room in it to stash a hardsuit, if you disassembled it and stacked it in the corner; but she could hardly do that with this suit, through whose every fiber and neural array flowed a living consciousness. All around her, what seemed like silent chrome and kevlar monitored her vital signs, felt the shifts in her temperature and mood, even skimmed the wordless surface of her thoughts, all with a mind that, until a few moments ago, had been human.

 _Well, maybe not quite human,_ the hardsuit thought into her mind, with the unmistakable smooth and husky tones of a certain Sylia Stingray.

"Whatever, you're human to me. Even if right now you're in a tin can." She rapped on the hardsuit's arm.

Sylia-- or Priss' mental image of her-- frowned disapprovingly. _This is advanced technology, and it's saved your life more times than you can count!_

"Okay, I won't call it a tin can." She grinned viciously, her brain still feeling a little overcooked from the mix of stimulants and shock. "I'll call it a Motoslave instead. After all, it fits to my body, it does my bidding..."

_Even the Motoslaves have a modicum of intelligence. And I'm pooling all of my considerable reserves now in search of a cure for your impudence._

"Yeeeeahhh. Whatever you say, princess." Priss blew her an imaginary kiss, stood up and stretched, then started making her way back towards the truck.

The hardsuit's legs stalled, almost pitching her forward into the concrete. _\--And to answer your earlier question, no, you are not driving in your condition._

"Then who's gonna? You?"

Sylia chuckled. _While, as I just demonstrated, I have some limited control over the hardsuit, I would prefer more practice before unleashing myself upon the citizens of Megatokyo. Take the cot in the truck for tonight. You can drive us home when you're sober._

"Oh, right, yeah." She'd forgotten the truck was kitted out with practically a full medical facility, which was funny since she was always the one taking advantage of it. "But wait, what're you gonna do? Hang yourself up on the wall?" The image of Sylia stowing herself away in one of the hardsuit bays popped into her mind, and she barked a laugh.

 _I could do that,_ she mused. _If you'd prefer. Or..._ She flashed Priss an image.

"...Huh." But she'd never slept with her hardsuit on... not on purpose, anyway. "Won't that be uncomfortable?"

_If you wear your softsuit, no, it shouldn't be. You don't feel uncomfortable in it normally, do you?_

"Now that you mention it, I guess not." It really was an amazing design, she was pressed to admit. The hardsuit weighed more than she did, but the nanofibers in the softsuit moulded perfectly to the wearer's body, adjusting to the pressure from the hardsuit in such a way that she hardly felt like she was wearing it. And not only could she jump and kick with greater force, run with incredible speed, but her natural movements never felt hampered.

Well. Okay, there were a few things she couldn't do in suit. But by and large, it didn't feel like wearing armour at all.

Priss got into the truck, pulled down the cot, and flopped back on it, halfway to horizontal before bothering to unclasp her suit and wriggle out. She'd lose Sylia as soon as she took off the helmet, and so she saved that for last, wishing she at least had a drink to dull the inevitable wave of loss.

"Don't suppose you've got any liquor in this truck? Can't exactly go back to the club looking like this."

Sylia's wordless radiation of just how unprincipled she found that idea made the answer clear. Priss rolled her eyes.

"You know, this having to wear you all over the place is really gonna make a dent in that whole top-secret, 'I think I'm Batman 'cause I'm a billionaire playgirl with a tower full of fancy gadgets' shtick." She pulled off the helmet before Sylia could reply to that one, then cleaned up double time, scrubbing the makeup from her face with antiseptic wipes and tossing her stage clothes into a corner.

Back in the softsuit, she slipped the helmet over her head and breathed relief as Sylia's presence washed over her once more. A goofy little smile tickled at her lips as warmth slid slippery-velvety down her spine, the tensions she'd accumulated even after just a few moments apart melting away, and she stretched out on the cot, lazy and feline.

Yeah, she was a junkie for Sylia. She could live with that. It was less likely to kill her than the alternative, as long as you didn't break any of the rules.

"Want some tunes?" She thumbed through the hardsuit's HUD until she found the audio module. At Sylia's horrified expression, she added, "Oh, this is all aftermarket. I took the liberty of having a couple little extras put in, you know, for the road."

Sylia sputtered, the image of her in Priss' mind all but turning purple. " _Aftermarket?_ Priss, you can't modify the hardsuits! They're--"

"I know, I know, 'top secret'. I asked Dr. Raven. So relax, will ya?

"That's not what I was going to say." Sylia winced. "And that man-- he knows better! I'll be having words with him."

Now it was Priss' turn to wince. As Sylia went, calling old Pops _aitsu_ was vicious. "Geez, you sure are het up about this. What's the deal?"

Sylia let out a sigh. "It would be-- easier to show you."

Something opened up between them. It was the damnedest thing: from Priss' side it felt like a realization, but she knew it was a memory. She still didn't know how Sylia did all this so easily. But she tried to quiet her mental chatter, and surrender to the flood of feelings.

 _Hey, I've been here before!_ It was the simulation room, where Sylia put the team through their paces and measured their abilities. Now, though, she was headed through a side door into a room she'd never been allowed in before--

_\--and she was Sylia._

_Four bays stood before her, each slightly larger than an adult human. For now three were empty, but from the leftmost one a soldier of chrome, silver-green and blue and polished to a mirror sheen, stood at attention._

_The suit of armour had no face: the tinted visor provided total anonymity to the wearer, and right now it was empty. But its shape, the lines of the helmet, had been crafted to suggest a personality. She would not build each one, nor even draft it, until she knew the person who would wear it._

_This one was Sylia's, and it was made in her ideal image of herself: cold and implacable, a stoic leader. Yet somehow, without her conscious input, a certain softness had crept into the design. Not just the figure-- she had an aesthetic preference for the female form, one that crept into all aspects of her life-- but the roundness of the helmet suggested an organic nature, a spark of humanity. She told herself that it would make her team seem less intimidating to those they aided; after all, it would be easy for the public to see them as dangerous, not the hand of balance she intended them to be. But she knew, too, that to a keen eye it spoke to another balance, the one between human and machine-- a balance that she herself grappled with each day._

_It would not meet too many keen eyes, she hoped. Just looking at it made her feel vulnerable. Yet she had to admit that the softness was part of what made it beautiful: a study in weaponised femininity, a work of art._

_Beneath its eyeless gaze, she now took up work on her second design. This one would be worn by a woman very different from Sylia; a woman she was only just beginning to understand. That made designing something that would suit her hard. Yet it also imbued it with the thrill of discovery, for with every line she put down on paper, so too did the woman named Priss Asagiri come more clearly into focus._

_Sleek lines, not utilitarian like those of her own suit, but fluid. Not a dancer's grace, no-- perhaps that would come later, for another woman she had an eye on-- but an animal's, an elegance contrasted with hard, sharp points like the horns of a noble demon. The hot pink and electric blue of Tinsel City's clubs assaulted the eyes, replacing her customary muted tones. Extra impact cushioning, for a wearer she knew would charge into battle without restraint; but artillery too, because in melee combat she lost her cool. Being a gunner would force her to focus, to think before she acted._

_As Sylia drew, the tension in her slowly unwound. She didn't like to be watched while she worked: it was fine for others to see the finished product, but the process itself was too intimate. She felt like everything she thought and knew about Priss could be discerned as she chose, erased this line and preferred that one, narrowed down her design to a perfect fit. Even when she knew she was alone, the irrational fear of being seen made her twitchy at first. But as she lost herself to the flow of her work, the outside world receded. She dropped her carefully cultivated mask, gasped and laughed and grimaced and paced as, bit by bit, her vision came together._

_When the suit was done, it would hug her mental image of Priss-- and hopefully, the real thing-- like latex. But each individual choice, so deliberately made, would be lost in the whole. No one else would ever be inside this moment._

_She was free to dance._

The flow of memory thinned out, parting them, and she could hear Sylia's voice as a separate entity once again.

 _...So if you wanted something like that,_ she finished softly, _you only had to ask. I would have been happy to give it to you. But my work..._

"Shit, Syl. I didn't know." What she'd seen had been nothing she'd expected out of Sylia-- which was how she'd wanted it, apparently. "You never came across to me as an artist."

Sylia smiled at her with gentle humour. _What do you think designing lingerie is? Or writing poetry?_

Sylia wrote poetry? She'd never said that before, though somewhere in the back of her mind she felt like she should have known. You didn't build things like the Motoslaves, like bikes-- and yeah, all that stuff in her shop, priced more like it was in a gallery than like she wanted to sell it, though it sold anyway-- without that creative spark. But... "Most artists I know are like... you know, like me. We wear our passions on our outsides, we're always talkin' about it. We can't not. I never knew you could have such a dazzling mind and, well... not show it."

She felt the faintest sadness from Sylia then. _It's the only way I can show it._

Priss hugged herself tightly, pressing the hardsuit to herself in the process. "C'mon, you're gonna make me cry, ya big goofus. 'Specially now I just fucked up your project."

_It's all right. Just do me a favour-- give it back to me, and I'll repair it. Anything you want, I'll add. Just let it be me who does it._

She chuckled. "Sure, no big. Only aren't you gonna have a hard time doing surgery on yourself?"

Sylia went pink, caught in a slip of the intellect. _Oh._ She mulled over that for a while. _Still, I don't trust anyone to do it who doesn't know my vision. Not even Dr. Raven. So... perhaps you could..._

Priss stammered. "Me? Sylia, I don't know a thing about hardsuits!"

_No, but you're the one who shares my mind. And I can guide you._

"That's still like doing surgery on yourself. And the module's in the helmet, remember? How'm I gonna hear you if I take it off?"

 _We'll find a way._ With all the tech Sylia had packed into even this modest truck, she supposed she couldn't doubt it. Of late, there really didn't seem to be any limits to what she could pull off. _Besides, it seems like you'll be needing to learn sooner or later. I don't know if I can fix any of the suits by myself now-- if I can move much at all without you to interface with._

"Any of the suits? You mean we're not disbanding after all?"

She sighed. _Honestly, I don't know. I'm not sure I can even ask Nene to come back, after everything. But at least, if we're going to be stuck in a hardsuit... we might as well do something good with that power._

Priss let out a fond little laugh. "...Oh Sylia. You really did wanna be Batman, didn't you?"

_Didn't you, growing up?_

"Me? Nah." She let herself sink into the softsuit, the responsiveness of it making the meager cot feel like a bed of clouds. "I wanted to be Sailor Moon. Love and justice and shit."

Sylia stared at her. _You're joking._

Priss sputtered out a laugh. "...Yes, I'm joking! I can't believe you're in my mind and you still fell for that!" After fighting for several moments to control her lungs, she said, "No, I wasn't into anything like that. Superheroes, saviors... that wasn't real life. If someone out there was really gonna fix up this fucked-up world, why hadn't they done it already? Who was gonna show up and make all _my_ problems disappear?"

An awkward silence hung between them, full of a lot of things Sylia wasn't saying and wouldn't let Priss see.

 _I tried,_ she said eventually. _I know I failed._

"Hey, no, that's not what I meant!" Well, now she felt like a heel. "Actually, I was raging pissed at you at the time, but... looking back at it, you did kinda sweep me off my feet there. More than just literally," she added. "I didn't want to trust a city slicker like you, but you made me feel like I was something special."

 _You were special,_ said Sylia. _I wanted you from the start._ The emotion that rushed through them both left her in no doubt as to the meaning of the word "wanted", and Priss bit her lip, riding out the wave that could so easily become something more.

"Heh. So really, all this time we've both had it bad for each other, and it took this"-- she gestured at the hardsuit --"to get us there."

 _Something like that._ There was more that Sylia wasn't telling her, she knew, but it seemed to pain her, so Priss let it slide.

She decided to shift topics. "...So why _were_ you in the front row at my show, anyway?"

This time, there was no deception. _Because your art means something to me, too._

"You never told me."

_It's not the kind of thing I know how to share._

Priss nodded mentally. "Just... I'd've thought classical or something was more your style. The mosh pit, the screaming, the fans throwing their underwear... hell, I saw you there and it's still hard to picture you there, you know?"

She could feel Sylia's thoughts choosing to skim very delicately over that part about the underwear. _It's not usually my scene,_ she agreed. _And I do appreciate the classics... of all eras. But what I enjoy about them has little to do with style or taste._ She focused her attention on Priss, warm and inviting. _You should know, as one yourself... what all the great musicians of history have in common isn't their sound. It's that behind their music, you can hear what they're feeling. Their passion bleeds through._

Priss blinked. She did know, but she'd never expected Sylia to put it in such words.

_When I went to your show, Priss, I felt you almost as much as I do now. I felt your anger at me, and your hate... all born from the pain I'd given you. I could tell that it had hurt you so much because you really loved me, as fiercely and absolutely as anyone could love. I could feel your shattered heart tearing into you with every high note, every time your voice caught on a word and almost gave out, and you made it sound like it was planned. I let those moments hurt me just like they hurt you. I didn't know how to apologize. I still don't. So I let you savage me with your music, over and over again, because it was all I could do._

"...Wow." She let out a breath. "That's quite the review."

_You're not upset?_

"No? Why would I be? Seriously, I wish more people talked about how my music made them feel, instead of trying to be all objective and shit. I don't care whether I'm too much like this band or not enough like that one. I want to know I'm moving people."

_But that was your personal pain. You never meant for me to hear it._

Priss scoffed. "If I didn't want you to hear it, sweetheart, I wouldn't have sung it on stage. Trust me, everyone who sings a breakup song wishes that person was right there in the crowd so their words could tear them a new one. I don't know how you could stand it."

_It was the hardest thing I've endured in a long time. But I needed to face it. If I was going to face you for real._

The words came out of her mouth unchecked. "...You've changed."

It felt like a strange thing to say. She hadn't had very many deep conversations with Sylia, least of all about this: this storm that had always threatened between them but had never been allowed to break. When Priss had finally grown tired of the silence and tried to do something about it, Sylia had pushed her away. Oh, she'd known that was what it was about, that whole grandiloquent breakup of the Knight Sabers. Sylia wasn't the type to get cold feet over casualties. No, she'd been running from her feelings, and for whatever reason, now she wasn't running any more.

Now that her mind had backformed that whole narrative, the words she'd said without thinking made sense. But why? And why then? She'd tried to talk to Nene and Linna about it, but Linna had been uncharacteristically cold, firmly shutting down her attempts to see Nene by saying Priss' presence would only upset her more. What had really happened in that last battle that no one else was telling her?

 _You want to know the truth._ Sylia's presence ached with something like fear, something like loss. It made her throat tighten, a sense of imminent doom twisting its way up from her stomach, threatening to choke.

 _\--No!_ Priss' mind yelled, the thought subvocalized before she could speak. _If it hurts this much, I don't wanna..._

She clutched at her helmet as if she could press down the rising anxiety. "Not yet, not now, please, just... let us have some time together before you tear us apart." The sick certainty in what she'd just spoken gripped at her stomach. "That's what it is, isn't it? This thing, whatever it is, you think I'll leave if I know, so you pushed me away first."

_Yes._

"So, in order to never have to deal with me leaving you... you made me leave you?"

Sylia laughed sadly. _Ridiculous, isn't it? But I just couldn't face you. The thought of you knowing the kind of person I truly am..._

"I already know some of it, I think." She was piecing together what Sylia had told her, how the events of this evening had gone down. "You're some kind of Boomer, aren't you? It's okay. So was Sylvie. I don't..."

 _...I don't remember much after Sylvie,_ she realized. It had to have been longer than it felt like-- somehow her feelings for Sylia had reached the point where she couldn't repress them, couldn't even be apart from her without feeling like the world was ending, like she was in the throes of some crazy addiction. That hadn't happened overnight.

_I know. And yes, to spare you the detailed discussion we've had once before, I'm something like a Boomer, if that helps you make sense of it. Though that's far from the worst I've kept from you._

Priss shook her head. "Just... let's not. Not tonight. Please."

She wanted to reach for Sylia's hand, press it close to her beating heart; but she knew Sylia already felt it. Absent any physical gestures that made sense, she pictured them whole and in the flesh, the taller woman lying curled in such a way that Priss could spoon against her back, her head resting on Sylia's shoulder and her arms around her waist. It felt very real, and she let herself be lost in the illusion for who knew how long, her eyes falling closed both in and out of the dream.

 _...You're kinder than you know,_ came Sylia's voice out of nowhere, thick and shaky with emotion.

Priss stirred, and she leaned in to kiss Sylia's cheek. That felt real, too. _Well, you're braver._

 _It was hard to come back,_ she whispered, and if the tear that rolled down her cheek was a product of Priss' imagination, she was better at imagining than she thought.

 _It was hard to have you gone,_ said Priss. She took Sylia's hand in hers, squeezed it, in a world where they lay on silken sheets and not in the back of the Silky Doll truck, where Sylia's perfume and the smell of a cheap club in Ota somehow managed to mingle and seem right, in some tawdry, forbidden way. _Stay with me._

Back in the real world, lights flickered across the hardsuit's HUD, the images morphing and shifting. Priss caught them out of her half-attentive vision. _What are you doing?_

Inside the helmet, drifting into the dreamworld as if from the radio, swelled the notes of a familiar song. Piano and soft guitar mingled in one of Priss' less aggressive melodies, and Sylia murmured sleepily.

_Thought you might want some tunes._

Priss smiled and snuggled closer, and finally, entwined, they fell asleep.


	2. Knight Errant

_It's no good, Syl,_ Priss thought, thankful she could speak without pausing from shoveling rice and eggs through her open visor into her mouth. Lately she just couldn't seem to sate her hunger, as if her body were making up for years of missing nutrients. _I've tried calling. She just keeps hanging up on me._

 _Tell her I want to talk to her,_ said Sylia.

_She'll just wonder why you didn't call her yourself._

Without warning, Linna had moved Nene out from under Sylia's care and into the local municipal hospital, where the staff had been instructed not to let either of them see her. Linna probably hadn't thought to specify "no people in hardsuits", but then Priss figured walking up to the front desk in full, face-hiding battle armour wasn't going to get her far, either.

She continued to muse. _Maybe she'd listen to Mackie?_

 _Probably,_ Sylia said with a sigh. _He's almost as angry with me as they are. And if he's not now, he will be._

 _We gotta talk to him._ They'd been avoiding Mackie since they got back: easy enough to do in the expansive Lady's 633 building, since Sylia knew which areas he kept to. Still, they were hiding out in their own home, and it was wearing on Priss. She didn't want to upset Sylia, but something had to be done.

 _...All right._ Sylia took a deep breath, an entirely superfluous mental motion. _I know where he'll be._

Priss threw her bowl in the sink, grabbed a soda, and they went.

***

"Priss!"

Mackie turned from his computer to see Priss framed in the doorway, decked head to toe for battle. He jumped to his feet at once. "What's happening?"

She held up her hands, one with her half-empty soda still in it. "Relax, Mackie, it's not a fight. We've got some explaining to do." _And I think you do, too,_ she thought.

Mackie glanced around behind Priss. "We? Is Sylia here?" On the hardsuit's scanners, she saw his heart rate climb. "Where is she? I've been so worried about her..."

"She's okay." Head that question off first before getting to the rest. "She's, uh, actually right here." She rapped the chestplate of her hardsuit, then corrected and pointed to her head. "Or I guess more like here. She's sort of in all of it, but I can't hear her if I take the helmet off."

Mackie scrutinized her, clearly trying to find some sense in what she'd just said. "In your hardsuit?"

"She _is_ the hardsuit, technically." This part was going to hurt. Her gaze fell to the floor. "I... I stabbed her. I wasn't in my right mind, she was bleeding out, she... some kinda crazy Boomer thing happened to me, and... yeah, don't ask me how this works, I don't get all your triple-dog-super-secret Stingray family junk, but I... she merged with the hardsuit." She chanced a look up at Mackie. "I'm sorry."

Mackie swallowed, closed his eyes, let out a breath. "No, it's... no, that's actually good news. As long as her neural nanophage network is intact, she'll be fine. I can get her back from that."

"You can?" Instinctively, Priss clutched her own arm to her chest. _If he does that, I won't have her like this any more..._

Sylia sensed her mounting panic. _It's all right, Priss. I won't let him do that. I'll explain to him._

Priss exhaled a sigh of relief, which to Mackie must have seemed directed at him.

"Yeah, it'll take me no time," he said. "Just go change. I'll have everything ready--"

"No." She drew back from him, and knew he saw the fear inscribed on her taut lips, in the lines around her eyes. For the first time, Sylia's habit of keeping her emotions hidden behind her visor seemed appealing. She didn't need Mackie seeing what a squalling child she'd become.

"No, I can't-- there's something wrong--" Not wrong but right, but how that had happened was opaque to her, buried deep in a slick black box that her mind's grasp just slipped off.

"Hey, steady." Mackie backed up a little himself, trying not to show fear, but she read it there anyway. As if she might attack him.

"I won't do anything you don't want to." Cautiously he reached out a hand, like he was coaxing a wild animal, and touched her on the shoulder. "But I do want to talk to Sylia."

Of course he would; she was his sister. She could hardly keep them apart. But the thought of taking off the helmet made her chest feel tight. With a somber nod she began to pull it off anyway, but he stopped her.

"No, there's got to be another way." He indicated a chair near some machines. "Sit down over there."

She did so, feeling like a science experiment as he clipped and unclipped electrodes from her helmet. That seemed to be her fate now anyway, she thought morosely: to be another Stingray experiment. Then again, maybe she'd signed up for it, offered herself up for whatever unholy Boomerizing project the good doctor's daughter had had in mind.

_...Yeah, right. And I'm Joey Ramone._ She might be crazy for Sylia, but there were limits to her madness. 

Mackie poked and prodded her and poked and prodded the computer, thankfully keeping all of his prodding in neutral territory. Text started to scroll down the screen, too fast for Priss to decipher, and his mouth made a little O.

"What's up?" she asked.

"...Okay, I'm afraid I am gonna have to ask you to take all that off. The softsuit, too." He fetched her a robe. "Something really weird is going on here."

She raised her eyebrows sardonically, setting down her soda and gathering the robe up in her arms. "Really? No shit."

She retreated to the bathroom and returned with hardsuit in hands, trying to push through the feeling that the world had gone faded and thin. Wordlessly she handed it to him, and he stuck more electrodes on it, then did the same to her.

"Can you tell me what's going on?" she groused, tapping her leg rapidly against the stainless-steel chair. "In words I understand, please."

"I'm not sure." Mackie ran his finger down the screen. "But it looks like... even though you're apart now, it's like the signals are overlapping. And it's to do with the data. It's been replaced."

She gave him a look. "Thanks, Mackie. That was a lot of help."

"...Oh, sorry. Well, um, how to explain this so you get it." He paused. "You're a clone made up of billions of nanomachines."

"For the sake of example, yeah, sure, I can go with that."

He looked her in the eyes. "No. I mean you're literally a clone made up of billions of nanomachines."

She stared back. "What."

"Look, I don't know everything, but you and Sylia got infected by a nanovirus that Largo had Anri put into you when she stabbed you. In order to fight him off, you went on a Grand Theft Auto tour of Megatokyo, grabbing everything you could find to incorporate it into your body using Boomer fusion. Apparently Sylia got caught up in the fusion somehow, and you ended up in the same body."

"...Mackie, are you sure you didn't eat some bad shrimp and fall asleep on the couch watching one of your cartoons?"

"Mostly sure. Really, I'm still trying to process it myself."

Priss rubbed at her temples. Appallingly, this was all starting to make some sense. "So we were a fusion Boomer, and we de-fused at some point, because Sylia was just Sylia when I woke up." She tipped her chair back with one foot and pointed a finger at him. "When I woke up. That has to have been when we separated." _That's why I don't remember anything. That's why missing Sylia feels like missing a part of my body. Because I am._

"Yeah. I diverted your nanomachines and Sylia's into two bodies, cloned from your own tissues. You were supposed to stay here for observation, but Sylia flipped out on you and holed up in her bedroom. She wouldn't let me near her at all."

"Why? What was the big deal that she had to shut everyone out?"

"That I still don't know." He tapped the screen. "Anyway, the nanomachines split up perfectly fine. There shouldn't have been a problem. Except... here." He drew circles with his finger around something that made no sense to her... until suddenly, it did.

Priss squinted at the display, trying to understand the fact that she understood. And yet the evidence for why she understood was the very thing she was looking at, there in white text on blue.

Her eyes widened again, and she said, simply and ineloquently, "Fuck."

"Yeah. Every replicated cell in your body is tagged as yours. But there's data from both of you in there. See, this right here--" He brought up another window, overlaid them.

"It matches Sylia's," she finished.

Mackie nodded, not fazed at all by her sudden comprehension. "It's the same with the hardsuit. To a scanner, it reads as Sylia in your suit. But on a deeper level, there are little parts of her-- her neural map, her consciousness-- that are overwritten with little parts of you."

Priss frowned. "I don't feel like Sylia, though. I feel like me. I mean, I've shared her memories through the hardsuit link. I saw from her perspective. We're still different."

"It's only a small amount of data. Realistically it just means she's a bit more like you, and you're a bit more like her. Like how you understood what I was talking about just now." Priss nodded.

Mackie looked at her. "Unfortunately, that's not the only data that's showing up. There's a third pattern overlaying both of your neural networks... in fact, the corruption caused by that pattern might have been what got your data all scrambled in the first place. I'm sure you don't need to be Sylia to figure out whose it is."

"...Largo." She made fists of her hands. "That rat bastard! I'll kill him!"

"Technically, he's already dead... we think. All that's left of him is those traces inside you and Sylia. Less like a live virus, more like... a scar."

She huffed a humourless laugh. "Well, then," she stated grimly. "I guess I'll be devoting my newfound knowledge of science to eradicating every trace of him from every cell in our bodies."

"That would be, uh, unwise."

"Why?"

"It's an overwrite, Priss. Whatever original information was there, it's gone. And what's there now is like... imagine there are lesions all through your brain. This stuff is like stitches or solder, bridging the gaps where your brain otherwise wouldn't make connections. If you try to pull them out, your whole mind might collapse."

She pinched the bridge of her nose, exhaling sharply. "Okay. Okay, we'll work on that later." Why hadn't she'd stopped for a post-breakfast cigarette? It would have made all this much more tolerable. Not to mention the fact that her stomach was growling again.

"First things first. Give me my helmet back. Then we need to talk about the others."

***

A phone call, some pulled strings on Mackie's part, and a trip up a side elevator later, Priss and Sylia were standing in front of the door to Nene's room. Priss knocked on the door, then, as she'd been instructed, pulled back around the corner to where Nene wouldn't see her.

A few moments later Linna emerged, looking like a nervous wreck. She didn't need scanners to tell her that Linna probably wasn't sleeping much, and had likely been subsisting on hospital vending machine food for who knew how long.

 _I ought to have something sent up to her,_ Sylia thought, and retreated to a quiet corner of their mind, apparently to place a phone call. With her brain. Could she do that? She couldn't even keep track of what was possible these days.

Priss turned her attention back to Linna. "Um, hi," she said weakly. "You look like shit."

"So would you under the circumstances." Linna sighed. "All right. You have five minutes to explain to me why Sylia isn't here, why she hasn't been here, and why she thinks it's acceptable to throw us into battle blind with no idea what kind of nightmare _thing_ we're expected to go up against." She paused, looking Priss up and down. "Also, why you're in a hardsuit."

 _Hoo boy,_ thought Priss as Sylia winced in her head. "Okay. First, Sylia's here."

"She is?" Linna tried to look around her.

"No, no-- she's in the suit." At Linna's blank look, she closed her eyes and pressed them with her fingers, seeing spots. "This is going to take a lot longer than five minutes."

***

Linna leaned back against the wall, the both of them having sat down in the corridor some time ago. "That's a lot to take in."

"I know. I'm sorry we didn't explain earlier. But you can see why... I mean, everything went to shit. We weren't even ourselves half the time, and now, well..." She let out a weak laugh. "Let's just say Sylia and I aren't going to be doing any solo ops for a while."

Linna nodded slowly. "It doesn't change the fact that Sylia's been incredibly irresponsible when it comes to keeping her team safe. Fighting Boomers is one thing, but having to scour the field for your friend's missing body parts... that'd break anyone."

 _I know,_ the voice in her head echoed.

"She knows. And she doesn't expect either of you to come back. She'll settle with you both for what you went through."

"It's not money I want," said Linna quietly. "Though Nene could probably use it since she's off the ADP, and I don't see her getting another job any time soon."

"Shit." Priss scuffed her shoe on the floor. This really was one big mess.

Linna's voice began to rise. "I just want to know why. How we could give all that we have for her, put our lives on the line, and then she treats us like this! What even are we to her?"

A wave of feeling swept over Priss, like a thin ghost of a memory whose words were lost to her, leaving her sad for no reason she could place. Linna glanced over at her.

"...You okay?"

"Yeah. It's nothing." She shook her head. "I dunno. Maybe it's because I share her mind now, or whatever you want to call this situation we're stuck in. But I think she's just... she sucks at people, yeah? Like, really sucks. Like if you were walking in downtown Tinsel and there was a busted water main and it was leakin' into the ground so this huge sinkhole opened up and swallowed you straight into the sewers, and you smelt like shit for the next week? That wouldn't even be close to how much she sucks."

_Thank you for the vote of confidence, Priss._

"But... this is gonna sound weird coming from the Queen of Hate here. Maybe she's just getting to me. Or maybe I'm just some idiot who fell too hard and too fast and got the bruises to show for it. But I don't think she means it."

She looked at Linna. "Think about it... for most of her life she's been shut up in that tower like some fucking fairytale damsel, only she's the one shutting herself in. All she's done-- all she's wanted to do, though hell if I can figure out why, was see the patterns in things. She can make money and contacts hand over fist 'cause she knows how to pull strings, she can make this stunning lingerie because she knows what looks good and what's out of place. She knows how to manipulate things so they fall the way she wants them, but she doesn't know shit about people."

Linna's expression puckered into a frown. "But she's so charming some of the time."

"Sure, she knows the script. She's figured out what sounds good-- her old man probably taught her that. But when it comes to a situation she doesn't have a script for, she freaks out."

"She fell in love with you."

"Yeah, and her brain flipped a fucking table."

A voice spoke up. _Would you mind not talking about me as if I'm not here?_

"...Oops. Sorry." She ran her gloved hand over a notch in the wall, picking at the plaster. "And me on the other hand, who knows. I think after Sylvie she must've been the only thing giving me some sense of stability."

Linna coughed out a laugh. "You? Stability?"

"Yeah yeah, rub it in. Point is I act like I wanna run off my leash, but turns out there doesn't feel like much of a point unless someone else's holdin' it." She toyed with the chip of plaster in her hands, then flicked it away. "Everyone needs someone. And I guess I need someone who'll keep me straight."

Linna nodded a little, seeming lost in thought. Eventually, she spoke up. "I never said it to your face, and I should've. But... I'm sorry about Sylvie."

Priss' eyes stayed fixed on the floor. "'S okay. We all didn't say a lot of things we could've. I should've said something to you guys before I started losing it." Between Linna and, eventually, Sylia, she'd learned enough to know about the drug spiral she'd wound up in, much like the one she'd been headed into after Sylia had left.

Linna gave a wan half-smile. "I guess in the end, we fought together, but none of us really trusted each other, did we? We acted like we did, but when it came down to it, we each pulled away."

"Seems like Nene trusts you at least." The subject had to be broached sooner or later. "So how's she doing?"

"Not good," Linna said with a sigh. "She seemed like she was holding it together, but when she saw the Boomer-- or you and Sylia, as it was, I guess-- she just broke down. She was screaming over the comm about how it was all the Boomers' fault, Boomers killed her friend... When she wouldn't see you in the hospital I thought she was just overwhelmed, but... I don't think she ever truly accepted that you weren't dead. That she could be holding your arms in her hands and you were still alive."

Priss shuddered. Not remembering how she'd looked, she imagined it as Nene might have experienced it: Priss lying in the road, her body half gone, the stench of burned flesh and heated blood, the wrongness of black, hollow sockets where shoulders should be. Then somewhere in the wreckage, among the scrap and shattered glass, a hand: a hand that had played guitar for her, had clasped her shoulder as they grinned for dumb photo-booth pictures that Sylia would never have allowed if she'd known. A hand, unique to her, a record of her life with its scars and calluses and chipped nail polish, now swept aside like trash.

"No wonder she didn't wanna see me." _I don't know if I'd've wanted to see me either, after that._

Linna nodded. "Any time I brought up your name, she flipped out. Screaming that you were dead, that this was a nightmare. In the end I stopped talking about you. Not that I had anything to say, given I didn't know where you were or even if you _were_ still alive."

"Heh. She wouldn't be the only one."

"Huh?"

Priss shook her head again. "Just a stray thought. So... do you think I'll ever get to see her again? I miss the little munchkin." She turned to Linna. "I miss both of you, dammit. I never wanted to put you through all this."

"It wasn't just you."

"No, but if I hadn't gone AWOL after Sylvie... ah, screw it. No point picking apart who fucked up when, how and why. I understand if you want me gone, and so does Sylia. But if I had it my way... I don't wanna lose either of you."

"I don't wanna lose you either, Priss." Linna looked away. "But with Nene how she is, I really can't say... she needs me more, at this point. I'm the only one who's been there who she's not gonna flip out on."

"Yeah. I understand." She did, as much as it hurt. Who else could Nene talk to about being in combat, seeing the horrors she'd seen, and all at such an age? Who else who understood this crazy vigilante project Sylia had dragged them all into, who could empathize with a girl still straddling her teens who'd thought it was a great idea to strap on some power armour and fight crime in the big city, until the realities of battle wrenched out her heart and shook it around like a dog with a piece of meat?

"And as for Sylia... unless I can talk to her myself, I don't think I can say. And there's no way I'm putting on that crazy mind control helmet of yours."

"It's not gonna... actually, no, you're right, we don't know shit about how this works." Priss sighed. At least one of them was being responsible here. "Mackie's working on something to try and make it so she can talk out loud, you know, not just to me. But until then... just, you know, if you guys need anything. You need food, a shoulder to cry on..." She made a "call me" motion next to her ear. "We'll be there. I promise."

"Yeah," said Linna, in a voice that said she didn't feel it. Priss couldn't really blame her one bit.

***

The smog made ghost-lights of every neon sign, skyscraper windows gleaming through the gray like beastly, yellowed teeth. Somewhere out in the bay, factories burned the midnight oil, setting the smoky sky aflame in washes of orange and red. A police copter chuffed above them, invisible.

Even as she perched in the heart of the city, the streets below Lady's 633 throbbing with life, she felt lost. Her helmet was snug around her jawline, but for the first time it wasn't enough to keep the world from feeling unreachable, distant.

"...We're not good people, are we, Sylia?"

 _What do you mean?_ Sylia knew what she meant, but she was making her talk, draining the wound. Priss was thankful for that. So she talked.

"We're not saviors, we're not heroes, we're not fucking Batman. We're not... we're not any better than what we fight. Maybe we're worse." She watched Genom Tower's lights pulse in and out, in and out of the smog. "Somewhere out there, history's looking back at us, and saying we're the bad guys."

_Because of Nene?_

"Nene, Sylvie, Anri, Irene... you. All the people who've lost their lives, or had them twisted into something they were never meant to be. Even me."

_You and I are still alive, and so is Nene. I was wrong to make her do what I did, that's without question. But her life's not over yet, not if she doesn't let it be. She's got a good, strong heart._

"I wish I could tell her that," said Priss softly. "Right now she's hardly got anyone, and Linna's... she's got a life to live, and she should be out there living it. She can't carry this alone. She's gonna break, too, and then it's all of us-- four for four, the little _sentai_ squad that couldn't." She scoffed. "Doesn't exactly make for good children's TV."

_It was never meant to be a game._

"No, but did Nene ever think about that? Did we make sure of it? Or did we just take advantage? She wasn't even fit to be a front-line fighter, any idiot could see that, and we pushed her anyway-- you pushed her, I pushed her! At least I knew how to fight!" She slammed her fist into the concrete, feeling nothing, the hardsuit insulating her from the shock. "What were we thinking, Syl? That she'd look good in pink high heels? That it'd be cute when she got into trouble and started screaming for help?"

 _We didn't force her to fight,_ said Sylia without conviction.

"We didn't stop her, either."

For once, Sylia had nothing left to say.

Priss stared out into the dirty gloom. "You know, it's funny. Back on the streets with my gang, I... I never really cared whether we were the good guys or not. I'd given up thinking shit like that meant anything. There was no good and evil in the world, only bad and worse."

_No superheroes coming to save the day._

"Yeah. And then you came along." She scooched a pebble into line with her boot, then kicked it off the tower. "A real life Bruce fucking Wayne. For the first time, I started believing in superheroes." Her voice fell to barely audible. "...Because of you. Because of us. The Knight Sabers.

"And yet we weren't. I don't remember much, but I know I remember the names of every damn man, woman and child who died because of us, and that's how I knew you were lying about the casualties because _I have never forgotten a single person I saw die!_ Not one! And you could rip everything else out of my head and replace it with God damn nanomachines, but I have never forgotten that, it's carved in my bones, and you can take those too but I've-- dammit, I'm the kind of person who can kill someone, but I can never forget or forgive what I've done!" She turned to Sylia. "How sick is that? It would be one thing if I didn't feel! But even knowing how much I hate it, I still love it! I'd do it _again_ if I had to, and then I'd hate myself even more!

"You know when I stabbed you, Syl? You know when I went all Boomer batshit and damn near fucking ran you through the heart? You remember what it felt like when I ripped you open, when you screamed? How you thought you were gonna die? How you _did_ die, right in fucking front of me? Remember that?

"You know what I was feeling right then? There was this part of me hated what I was watching myself do, just begging for me to stop. A part of me who was just some kid dangling off the rail outside my shitty apartment, and yeah my dad was a drunk and I ran my mouth and I've never been a good kid, I punched the other kids out when they laughed at me and told 'em I'd stab them in the guts someday, but I'd never really, yanno?

"And there was the part of me that said, it's just life, that's what you gotta do, you get what you need and to hell with the rest. Get your money, get your junk, get whatever.

"And then there was something else. Something that's been growin' on me like mold all this time, like something rotting away in my gut, something that never got digested but just grew and grew. This knot of hatred. And when I stabbed you, when I felt your blood on my glove, all hot-- it was this part of me that felt good. So fucking good. Because I won, you know? I wanted to stand on your back and throw my fists in the air like I busted your lip in some turf fight, but you were _dying_ , you were fucking dying, and it still-- felt-- _good_!"

 _...Largo?_ Sylia offered.

"No. Not Largo, not you, just me. Just plain ol' regular out of the box home-grown me. Because that wasn't the first time."

Sylia didn't ask about the other times. She was thankful for that as well.

"And the worst thing? The worst thing? All the time while we were killing people and lettin' 'em die, I was telling myself that we were the heroes! That yeah, we're the badass good guys takin' down crime in Tinsel City, gettin' at Genom, bang, bang!" She made a gun of her fingers. "Even while a part of me felt like throwing up every time I remembered the way it looked for a man's brains to get splattered across the asphalt, or someone's leg ripped off at the joint, a bone sticking out the wrong way from a broken elbow... and while a part of me said, it's no big, I'm a tough girl, I can do it again, and a part of me craving it, pumped up for our next job... and all that, all that knowing it was fucked up and doing it anyway... and I still thought I was a hero..."

Finally, finally, her fire died out. The dam shattered, and she breathed in her own tears, sniffling stinging salt into the back of her throat and coughing.

 _Priss..._ She felt Sylia's presence embrace her as she started to cry.

"I'm twenty years old, Sylia, and I've seen so much death." She felt like a drowning woman, breaching understanding's surface for just a few moments at a time, bobbing at the threshold between realization and oblivion. "So much that it's become _normal_ , what the fuck? I'm a fucking _murderer_ , and it took killing someone I actually loved before I realized this!"

She began shaking, clawing at the back of Sylia's jacket, even though Sylia wasn't there and it was all an illusion, maybe even a hallucination, because how could something like this be real? How could her life be real?

 _Sometimes even the 'good guys' have to do that,_ said Sylia. _Sometimes you have to kill one to save the rest. Sometimes you have no choice._

"No, no, no..." She let go of Sylia, clutching her helmet-- but Sylia was the helmet but she was holding her in some other dimension, _this is so fucked up_ \-- and slowly bowing her head into Sylia's lap, still sobbing.

In one reality Sylia rubbed circles on her back, and in another she gently urged Priss to open her visor and take deep breaths, and Priss did, half curled up on Sylia and half curled on the concrete on top of Lady's 633. For a while everything felt like it was fading, cold breath whuffing in and out of her lips as she shivered, and then slowly the world came back in again in a way that didn't feel like knives and glass, a tolerable sort of way, and her breathing and her heart started to calm.

"When did my life get this way?" she murmured. "When did it get to where a string of dead lovers is normal, and two of them I killed myself? When did it get to where one of my closest friends has a breakdown 'cause she can't handle what she's seen, and it doesn't even shake me? When did I get to be so cold?"

Sylia had no answer except to wind Priss' hair through her fingers, and for a moment she thought she'd lost the helmet-- Sylia, silent, touching her head, but it was just another piece of the patchwork, and she had no strength left to question it.

"You were right, Syl. You were right. We shouldn't do this any more." She rolled over to gaze up at Sylia's face, at the clouds that soaked up the stars. "I may be in this hardsuit for good now, but I'm not fighting, not any more. I quit."

Sylia didn't laugh at her like some people would have. She didn't tell Priss that she was ridiculous, that battle was in her blood, that it was one of the few things that kept her on a somewhat even keel. She didn't tell her everything Priss already knew. And Priss realized that they'd been through this before, too, when Sylvie had died, and Sylia had been there knowing just what to do, but then she'd left and it had all come apart and maybe, maybe they were getting a second chance at doing this whole thing over right. Maybe Sylia had been right about this time being different.

Maybe, maybe, maybe, and who was she to believe in second chances? But it felt right. It finally felt right.

She would be a soldier no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Sentai_ technically just means "squad", so that's kind of like saying "the hoi polloi" or "ATM machine", but it sounds better in English. She's kind of referring to _sentai_ -the-genre, anyway.


	3. Knight Shift [E]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Priss and Sylia push themselves to their limits, part 1.
> 
> This gets very violent and also very sexual; there's not a whole lot in here plotwise if you need to skip it.

A city torn by disaster and crippled by greed, so hungry it was eating itself. A place where any voices screaming out for true compassion were silenced by the apathy of the streets. Where anonymous vigilantes high on their brutal version of justice rode themselves to ruin.

This was Megatokyo, home of Priss Asagiri, the last woman to still wear the vigilantes' mask. But the visor hiding her eyes was no longer a shield, a piece of armour, but a mirror held to the face of her lover. The blue chrome that encased her like an insectile exoskeleton was not her battle gear but an embrace. Her gun went unfired, her glove hand engaged only in tapping a pen on the arm of Sylia's overstuffed office chair, unaware and unconcerned that she was staining it an inky shade of blue.

She was bored.

It had jarred her to realise she hadn't had much of a life outside of the Knight Sabers for some time now. Singing at clubs only took up so much of her time, and she hadn't had a day job since... ever, really. When other kids her age had been prepping for junior high, she'd been sleeping in a warehouse with a knife in her hand, ready to stab any would-be rapists. (She'd bloodied a few, who clearly didn't expect the little waif to move that fast. She knew she was mostly just lucky, but she was still proud that the only sex she'd regretted had been entirely her choice.) She'd made her money shaking up other thugs and picking pockets while her peers had still been getting an allowance. What skills she had were entirely orthogonal to legitimate work, unless she wanted to go in for Advanced Pig training, and that rather defeated the point of not being a mercenary.

Sylia, meanwhile, had realized that she wasn't going to be able to manage many of her affairs from within her shared life as Priss, so had spent much of the day writing contracts that would give temporary control of her dealings to Mackie, until such time as they figured out how she might deal with her financiers in person. No one was exactly happy with this, least of all Priss, who had little care for what Sylia did with her money but even less for spending hours on end, without a break, drafting tedious legal documents.

"Can't we at least stop for a smoke?" Priss had whined. "My hands feel like one giant cramp."

Sylia had plucked the cigarette from her ashtray and taken a long, slow pull, which had at least soothed Priss' jangled nerves somewhat. _I can smoke here just fine. Besides, if I stop now we'll never want to start again. It's easier to just push through it._

Priss had had to admit that was true. Finally, Sylia had caved and admitted that she too could use a break, and Priss already never wanted to look at another word of legalese. A very small part of her wished Sylia could just operate the hardsuit autonomously, without needing her nervous system as a bridge; but the larger part recoiled at the thought of being parted. It was a dilemma, with both fixes having their flaws. And right now, the big flaw in this particular solution was that Priss was bored, and it was starting to make Sylia irritable as well.

_...You really don't have a terrible amount of patience, do you, Priss?_

"Gee, ma, what tipped you off to that one?" She tossed the pen back into its holder, a cute slam dunk that amused her for half a second, and pushed up off the chair. She was itching to stretch her legs.

 _Oh, I always knew. But until I was privy to your every physiological response, I never knew just how much._ No wonder she's self-destructive, she felt Sylia think but not quite vocalize, and she felt a little bad for subjecting Sylia to these feelings as well. _What do you normally do when you feel like this?_

"Drink. Smoke. Shoot up. Ride my bike. Find someone to punch. Make music, sometimes, if I have the muse. Stub cigarettes out on my arms, if I don't." Priss didn't need to speak out loud, but it was kind of fun to rant to "herself" in the large, echoey study and imagine what people would think if they saw her, a hardsuited mercenary pacing back and forth carrying on a conversation only she could hear. She wondered if Mackie watched her. Mackie probably watched her. Fuck, he probably had cameras in every room in Sylia's quarters.

 _Don't worry,_ said Sylia. _I sweep the place for them twice a week. There are none in here right now._

"The fact that you have to do it that often is scary on its own," Priss muttered. "Isn't he ever gonna grow out of that?"

 _Finding me attractive?_ said Sylia with some mirth.

Priss rolled her eyes. "No, perving on his sister. Please don't tell me you find it flattering."

 _No, I don't. I'm just resigned to it by now._ She sighed a little. _I probably should try to do something about it... get him out of the house more. As galling as it was to hear you say it so frankly, you were right in what you said to Linna: we've both been somewhat arrested in our development, emotionally speaking. Losing a father so young... apparently has that effect._

Priss honestly couldn't read whether that was also a jab at her or not. Not that she had room to talk after that little list of hobbies.

_But we were talking about you. Of course I'm not going to advise punching strangers, and you don't seem in the mood for songwriting right now._

Priss wrung her gloved hand pitifully, putting on a pleading voice. "Please, no more writing. I'll do _anything._ "

Sylia nodded. _But what keeps you from riding?_

She paused in thought. It was a reasonable question. Of course she'd bought a new bike with the money Sylia had given her, and while it wasn't the Stormwind, it was perfectly serviceable. And yet since the hardsuit incident she hadn't touched it at all.

"...You do," she said, as it finally registered what was holding her back.

_Me?_

"Yeah, you. I don't wanna not take you with me, but I don't know if I can ride with you there and, well... not run us off the road." She felt herself blush red, the thing she'd been trying to keep herself from consciously acknowledging rushing to the fore in a torrent of feeling.

 _Oh?_ Sylia's voice glittered with humour. _I didn't know it was like that for you._

"I-it's not!... I mean, yeah, but no... That's not what I...!" She threw up her hands, wordless.

"...It's intimate," she managed eventually. "You know? I'm trusting myself to something else, to a machine... I mean, no offence."

_None taken._

"But I'm giving up control. ...No, that's not quite right. I'm _sharing_ control. For that time when we're on the road, the two of us are one."

 _A little like our situation, hm?_ Sylia chuckled, in that deep, velvety voice that she was using more and more often lately. It turned everything below Priss' waist to jelly, and Sylia knew it.

"...Yeah. That's why, if I tried to do that with you..." She flushed again. God, even talking about this was too much, in a way that was making her really want to try it. "I don't know how long I'd last. And... there's laying down and then there's _laying down_ , know what I'm sayin'? I'm willing to take that risk alone, but with you..."

_Hmmmm._

Oh no. That was not a good _hmmmm_. It was a _hmmmm_ filled with mischief and the potential for mayhem. Actually, scratch that, it was the best _hmmmm_ she could possibly imagine for _exactly_ that reason, and for the reason that it set every part of her body tingling with a terrible, delightful anticipation.

_I think I might just have a plan._

She bit down on her lip. "You really want to do this." But something was off. "...It's also not like you. You're the one who usually cares so much about everything I do being risky, and here I'm the one worrying about the consequences..."

_You might not have noticed, but right now we're a little mixed up._

"I noticed, believe me! But does that mean, like, you're the risktaker now and I'm the responsible one? 'Cause I'm not sure I'm ready for that kinda lifestyle change."

 _No... it just means that quite frankly, I know that if you don't blow off some steam you're going to drive the both of us to an early grave, bike or no bike._ She smiled sympathetically, a smile Priss felt all around her, like being submerged in a warm bath. _Besides, you would have a hard time denying to me that this is already what you want._

Priss took a deep breath. "Yeah. It is. I'll be real, more than once I've nearly lowsided out there thinking about you. Just picturing you on the back of my bike does a number on me."

 _Must be hard,_ Sylia mused.

Her thoughts were foggy. "What?"

 _Riding that line of self-control. Not letting yourself go over the edge because if you do you might crash, but wanting to at the same time._ She said it matter-of-factly, like she was discussing her stupid finances, which somehow only made it all the more maddening. Sylia never talked about these things with such a casual, easy air. At least not to her. _Or does dancing with death excite you, too? Does knowing you might go out that way, laid to waste by your passions, make it even harder to hold on?_

"...dammit." Suddenly, staying standing up was incredibly hard. She paced by the desk again and leaned on it, watching her heart rate spike on the HUD as emotion got the better of her. "If you want me in your bedroom, princess, you're gonna have to do the moving."

 _No, that's fine,_ Sylia said lightly. _You look good right here._

She was only too aware of how she must look, half bent over Sylia's desk, aching and unable to do anything about it. She started to do something about it, reaching for the clasps that released the hardsuit's lower half, but her hand was stopped halfway to its goal.

The suit's look had always been on the fetishy side, she had to admit-- chalk that up to a lingerie designer's tastes-- but it had honestly never dawned on her that it could now double as a full-body restraint. One with Sylia Stingray's mind. She did _not_ know how to feel about that, even as the pendulum of her body was swinging towards "good".

"Kinky motherfucker," she growled, gripping the desk harder as arousal mixed with helplessness lit an angry fire inside her. There was no way to get friction in the suit, no matter how much she shifted around, but it didn't stop her from trying. "Aren't you worried I'll ruin your furniture?"

_It's already ruined. You stubbed several cigarettes out on it before I could stop you._

Something warm and smooth gently nudged her legs apart, and she whimpered as she was forced to take a wider stance, a feeling like hips pressing into her own pitching her forward further. It was her softsuit, sliding over her skin like it was alive. "Ohgodyouhavegottobefuckingkiddingme _youcanmovethatthing_ \--"

 _Of course I can. It moves with your thoughts all the time._ She'd never noticed how much like skin it felt before now, especially when it perfectly mimicked Sylia's fingers-- or what she imagined they must feel like, they'd never actually done this while they'd both had bodies, but that was certainly Sylia pressed against her back and Sylia's other hand on her throat and _fuck_ why was her hand up there?

 _When you sense danger, it softens to insulate the shock._ The thought crossed her mind that Sylia meant to choke her, to help her go out the way Hide went out, the way her thumb skimmed the weak spot under her jaw where the carotid artery was, threatening to press down so she went woozy and numb; but her touches stayed light, just hinting at the possibility, and damn if that didn't make her ache worse.

 _When you need to move fast, it becomes more pliable._ And it was certainly pliable now, more than keeping up with her need to go faster, harder, to push herself to the peak that hovered just out of reach.

She closed her eyes, shuddering, straining towards that climax with everything she had. She grit her teeth, not wanting to give Sylia the satisfaction of crying out loud, but as the feeling built she was afraid she might not be able to stop it.

 _I know you're close,_ Sylia whispered into her mind, and for some reason that was what pushed her over, clamping her thighs hard around the pulsing of her softsuit and the waves of pleasure spreading through her. She could only lean harder on the desk and pant through her teeth, hoping she made no sound, hoping that there really were no cameras to see a squirming, shivering woman in full cyber armour try extremely hard to appear unmoved.

Eventually the waves passed and her vision returned, and she slumped back into the chair with a wince, pulling up her visor to gulp in lungfuls of air. "...you're a cruel woman, you know that."

_But do you like me that way?_

She sensed it was asked genuinely- not an insistence, the _You like me that way_ she'd expected from Sylia turned to a question at the last moment-- and she knew Sylia must have felt her indecision somewhere in there. But she was honestly too dazed to know the answer. Losing control of her body had made her angry, but it had been a good kind of angry, she thought, the kind that made struggling feel fun. And having her thoughts read to the point where Sylia knew just what she wanted and how to use it to tease her... well, her mind was too much mush just thinking about that to contemplate the objective ethics of it.

She wasn't bored any more, that was for sure.

"...I think so," she managed eventually. Her voice felt raw, like she really had been choked. "Talk about it later?"

 _Mhm._ Sylia hugged her gently around the middle. _Poor girl. I've worked you hard today, haven't I?_

"Hey, if this is what being your personal secretary's like," she said lazily, kicking off the floor so the chair spun with her in it, "maybe I'm up for the job after all."

***

They lay out on the balcony of a chic little restaurant in Lady's 633, one of the outside businesses Sylia had enticed into setting up shop here, who paid an ungodly sum to her so they could sell plates the size of her fingernail for an even less godly price. A good deal, she supposed, if you had the chutzpah.

Sylia had closed the restaurant for the night so they could have the view to themselves. That had been her contribution to the atmosphere, while the nest of blankets they now lay in was all Priss. Sure, the hardsuit didn't feel, and the softsuit within was as comfortable as she'd get, but it still made things seem cosy. They'd swiped candles from the tables, some liquor from the bar, and were having themselves what was, in Priss' opinion, the perfect romantic dinner: scotch on the rocks and takeout from Funky Boy's Burgers.

 _You are going to die at thirty from clogged arteries,_ Sylia admonished her, even as Priss could tell she was enjoying it just as much.

 _Hey, you're the one who wanted to send the restaurant staff home early._ Priss reclined in the blanket pile, licking her fingers and feeling like some modern pastiche of a decadent Roman emperor. _What else'm I supposed to eat?_

_I know plenty of places that deliver decent food late._

_Yeah, but Funky Boy's is decent food_ fast. _I have a high metabolism, okay?_

 _I've noticed._ Sylia narrowed her eyes at Priss, who was reaching for her chocolate malt. _Just so you know, if you even think about making a whiskey float out of that, I'll strangle you._

 _Oh?_ Priss laughed, sipping the shake and the whiskey alternately. _Gonna make good on your little threat from earlier?_

A tiny pinkness dotted Sylia's cheeks. _You know... that was close to the last thing I expected to see you thinking back there._ The next thought came subvocalized, almost too quiet for Priss to grasp. _Maybe it shouldn't have been._

Priss took an extra-big slug of her whiskey, feeling it burn pleasantly all the way down, a warmth that fanned out into her limbs and settled between her thighs like a curled-up cat. _I dunno. It surprised me a little, too._

_Hmm? How so?_

She shrugged lightly. _I destroy myself. I destroy others, if it comes to that._ She took another gulp of courage. _I didn't think I was interested in being destroyed by someone else._

 _Is that what it is for you?_ The question came without judgment or humour, simply seeking Priss' truth.

 _'M not sure, honestly. It's like... you know me, I wanna win. Sure I'll let you fuck me over your desk if you wanna, if it makes you feel like a big girl, but only 'cause I know if it came to it, we're about even. Well, in your own body, anyway,_ she amended. _I guess I hadn't really thought about what the suit can do._

This time Sylia did chuckle. _That much was clear._

Priss made a face, but otherwise ignored her. _Point is, if you could beat me into the ground with both hands behind your back I wouldn't take it from you. I didn't sign up to be your punching bag._

 _Of course not. I wouldn't use you as one._ Sotto voce, she amended, _Unless you wanted it._

Priss gave the impression of a nod. _Nah, I believe you. And I don't want it._ She took a thoughtful sip of her milkshake. _But I might wanna be your sparring partner._

 _Interesting,_ said Sylia, in the voice of a scientist recording data-- which she was, every bit, and Priss shivered to know it. _Are you saying you want to hurt me back, then?_

Priss whuffed out a breath. _I want the option,_ she said at length. _Playtime aside, you've really got a lot of power over me right now, yanno? Ignoring the part where I'm practically dependent on the damn thing, you can keep me from taking the suit off... hell, you can keep me from moving at all. If you flipped out on me one day, I wouldn't stand much of a chance._

Sylia nodded. Contingency plans were something she understood; neither of them were so naive as to think their relationship earned an exception.

 _Mm._ It was a sound that said a "but" was coming. _But do you_ want _to hurt me?_

 _God, yes,_ was the thought she tried to hold back, but the whiskey was gone and thoughts were slippery and Sylia was there with eager hands ready to catch it, teasing it out with that honeyed voice. She wanted to hide but there was nowhere to go and the pulse between her legs throbbed like an overrevved engine, and it all poured out, out loud in a visceral snarl.

"You don't know how long I've wanted to mess up that pretty face of yours. Shove you up against a wall and kiss you hard till I'm fucking biting you, bite you until there's blood in my mouth 'cause I'm chasing it with my tongue when it drips down your chin. Grab your hair, fucking mess it up, you like everything so perfect, don't you? Everything in place, everything neat, well fuck your neat 'cause I wanna leave bruises everywhere I touch you, bruises where my hips slam into yours, where my hands grip your waist so you stay where I goddamn want you."

She growled, her hands clutching emptily at air. "Yeah, you think I'll go gentle with you? You never went gentle with me, fucking first thing you did was punch me in the gut when I was already half dead! You want gentle? 'Cause you'll get it when every part of you 'cept one is covered in welts from my fists, when every muscle is trembling on the verge of giving out, and all you want is for me to actually fuck you except I'm using the lightest damn touches, too light for you to ever come, and your hands are so raw you can't even feel them so it's all up to me, and that..." She licked her lips. "That might just be adequate payback for what you've done to me."

 _Mmhm._ Sylia had that "most interesting" note in her voice again, intrigued and not one bit fazed. _Would I be duly chastened then?_

"I'd make sure of it," she said. "Because you won't get a thing from me until I hear you beg, and I hear in your voice you really mean it. Till there are tears running down your cheeks because just a little more from me and you'd be there, and it's just out of reach but you want it so fucking bad, and I kneel between your legs and you hurt too much to pull me closer and you can only plead for me to kiss you deep until you come, again and again until you can't keep standing and all you can do is let me catch you, kiss your mouth with the same lips that made you come, make you taste your need mixed with the blood on your tongue. And then..."

_And then...?_

She clenched her fists, then let them fall open again. "Then... I'd probably feel like shit for working you over like that." She rubbed at her face. "Seriously, Syl, what's wrong with me? I love you, but sometimes I wanna fucking kill you, and it's like... it's not like even when I'm mad at you! I just wanna hurt you 'cause it feels good! The fuck is up with that?"

 _From my admittedly limited research after discovering the same impulse in myself, may I suggest that you are, as you would have it_ \-- she bit off the words delicately, turning them smooth in that way that only Sylia could -- _a 'kinky motherfucker'?_

Priss was glad she hadn't been drinking at the time, because she would have undoubtedly spat it out. She wiped her mouth and tried to stop grinning. "But isn't that more like..." She lifted her hardsuit leg as an example. "Yanno. High heels are kinky. Fucking someone in your office is kinky. Wanting to beat someone to a pulp, isn't that just... psychotic?"

_Have you ever actually been hallucinating when you've had that desire? You always seemed fairly clear-minded to me._

Priss rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. Psycho. Bugfuck. The product of"-- she laced her tone with sarcasm --"'disturbed circumstances'."

 _No one would doubt you're the product of disturbed circumstances, Priss._ Sylia smiled into her mind. _As am I. But think of it another way: who does it harm? You can't truly kill me, not the way we are now. You can't even really bruise me. At best, it'd be a startlingly accurate simulation, not unlike..._

The warm flutter of a dark plan hatching spread through Priss' chest, and she finished the sentence effortlessly. "The training lab."

_Exactly. If I hooked us up to the computers, I could fight you as myself. In fact, I'm willing to bet that's the solution to letting me speak outside your mind, too._

Priss cackled. "So what, you're gonna let me beat you senseless, then take house calls from your finance cronies? What a frickin' image."

 _No,_ she said silkily. _I'm going to conduct my important business deals during the daytime, in a perfect state of decorum and dress, thank you very much._ She smiled. _Then at night, we are going to spar._

"Deal," said Priss. She liked the sound of this plan. A good stress release, a chance to act out certain fantasies, plus no more paperwork...

Her face fell. "Wait... does that mean we drafted all those contracts for nothing?"

_I'm afraid it would seem that way, yes._

Priss fell back into the blankets with a groan. "I am going to fucking kill you."

 _As we already discussed._ Sylia's smile never wavered. _You are welcome to try._

***

From the observation deck, Priss watched as her mental companion put her simulacrum through its paces. In the middle of the training room, the Knight Sabers' tactile combat hologram, now wearing the appearance and stance of their erstwhile leader, performed a quick and brutal flurry of moves against a digitized rival; having been fed the motion data from Sylia's numerous fights against it, it responded as she would to her slightest thought, replicating the _kata_ with perfect fluidity.

"You could make an army of these things," Priss murmured in restrained awe, as a swift one-two from Sylia's fist and elbow staggered the dummy, her following leg sweep taking it to the ground.

 _Not really,_ Sylia replied. _The model knows my moves, but without my direct control it's much less capable._ The felled dummy flashed and faded out, to be replaced by a new one. _And it can only harm you when you're in the suit._

"Yeah, I guess so." Priss had on a modified softsuit, one that covered her cheeks and most of her head; it would apply rapid force wherever Sylia struck, but would only respond to contact from the hologram, meaning Sylia couldn't just cripple Priss with a thought. Meanwhile, if Priss struck the hologram, it'd send an equivalent message to Sylia's neural network, invoking the convincing experience of a blow. As Sylia had said, she couldn't be killed, but she could certainly be made to wish otherwise; and while the suit's life support would kick in if things got dangerous for Priss (an option that Sylia wasn't willing to waive despite Priss' protests), with the softsuit dealing the blows she was effectively unarmoured, and at real risk. Her arm cannon was powered down, and though her hand was still clad in metal the simulation would treat her strikes as bare. It was as equal as they'd get.

"There's just one thing I don't get," said Priss. "How'm I not just gonna predict your moves? I mean, I know what you're thinking."

 _You won't. Not if I'm careful._ Sylia dispensed of the dummy with a single gut punch, and brought on the next. _Pay attention. See if you can follow this._

Priss let her eyes go unfocused, still watching the scene though the greater part of her attention was on Sylia. The second consciousness in her head, she quickly noticed, was quite silent: she could feel the rises and falls of fear that mirrored the overall tide of the battle, but there was no point at which Sylia consciously planned an attack, nor thought anything outside brief bursts of _That was close!_ and _Focus._

It was all instinctive, she realized. That was what combat training did-- not merely teach deliberate actions but drill in unconscious responses, immediate and available regardless of what else was on your mind. Instincts only showed up on Priss' radar when there was emotion to go with them. And if anyone was good at keeping up a neutral emotional facade, it was Sylia.

Priss, on the other hand, was all emotion-- and especially in a fight. "So how are you not gonna read _my_ moves?"

_That's simple. I just won't look._

Of frickin' course. Sylia, undefeated champion for twenty-six years running of Not Giving A Shit. The outcome didn't matter to her, not of a simple brawl; she had more convoluted games to play. She didn't doubt this was part of them. But whether she won or lost, Priss imagined, meant very little for the role this dalliance played.

She resented that. More specifically, she resented just how damn much it turned her on.

 _All right,_ said Sylia with had-to-be-deliberate timing. _Ready to test it out?_

Priss pushed off the glass, flexing her fingers. "You're not tired after all that?"

 _I'm rarely mentally fatigued,_ Sylia said with a smile. _The program forces me to experience exhaustion after a while, but I've just reset it to base levels._

"Geez, wish I could do that." Cracking her knuckles and taking a few deep breaths, she looked over to the simulated Sylia, who beckoned her with two crooked fingers, and headed down to face her in the stark white room.

In front of Sylia's image, she took her stance. "Any rules?"

_Of course not._

Priss grinned. "Wanna bow?"

A single, fine eyebrow arched in response. _Do you?_

"Nah." She tried to avoid fixating on Sylia's disarming smile. _No good going out before I've begun...!_ "I'd rather see you do it." And with that, she dove in, her world narrowing to the figure sketched on the air before her, who instantly became an impressionist blur of motion.

She saw Sylia aim high; she rolled low, cursed as the feint became a drop, the softsuit slamming the back of her neck.

 _Shit, she's fast!_ She hadn't truly been expecting it to feel like much, being hit by a translucent figure, the way the old simulator had given these crude little jolts of feedback that only vaguely resembled pain. Now she was eating canvas, the breath knocked out of her, her vision swimming with spots. She growled, spitting out blood.

 _Out already?_ a smug voice chimed, a ringing ache inside her ear.

"Not even close!" She jabbed up with her elbow, hitting something soft; rolling Sylia off and over, she scrambled up only to narrowly block a kick, grabbing Sylia's leg instead and wrenching it sideways with a wet, fleshy crunch.

The simulation's eyes fluttered; reflected pain stung her too, making her blink back tears. She pushed through, dropped on Sylia-- and took a fist right to the face. Her head whipped on her neck with an awful crack, nausea flooding her, and she staggered backwards and fell.

A hundred alarms screamed at her, from her hardsuit or just her head; then faded to a distant roar, the world around her going black.

***

She woke to the feeling of something digging into her back, the joints in her arms a flared mass of pain. Twisting her head to see what was going on, she cried out as her neck protested the motion, her eyes blurring over with wetness.

Sylia straddled her back, holding her arms locked behind her in an unnatural pose, a knee pressed against her spine. At Priss' shaky return to consciousness, she smiled down at her.

_So you do feel pain. I was beginning to wonder._

Priss took a breath, gritted her teeth, and with every cell in her body screaming bloody denial, she flipped Sylia over her back and slammed her to the ground.

She landed sprawled on her back across Sylia, gasping. She couldn't feel her arms, only the alternating waves of numbness and agony that ripped through them like static. Every heave of her chest made her lungs spasm and cough blood, rivers of it spilling from her lips and pooling in the helmet's chin guard. She must have multiple broken ribs, if not other things; she felt made of powdered glass, held together only by her ligaments, her bones grinding on each other as she moved.

The fun was only just beginning.

She hadn't fought like this since the streets. Her hardsuit had coddled her, trapped her in a bubble where pain was muted. Now it was raw and red and real, its sheer ferocity pushing her over the line where she experienced it as hurt, and into a realm of other sensations.

She elbowed Sylia in the gut, once, twice, then pushed off her and snatched her up by the throat. Her arm quivered, nerves pushed to breaking point; it felt like deep massage.

"Now _you_ look good," she snarled, watching bruises spread across the simulacrum's throat where her fingers dug in. She knew it wasn't real, but the way Sylia made those thirsty little gasps, her muscles clenching and swallowing uselessly under Priss' fingers, made her ache. She wondered what it felt like to be choked in your mind. Sylia didn't need to breathe, couldn't feel her lungs pleading for oxygen, but her disembodied brain could still panic, sending her all the sensations of a body shutting down.

It was in that moment that Priss realized: she _should_ be feeling Sylia's pain. But she was too far gone. Every sensation, from Sylia or herself, was blurred together into a delightful, tingling slush of need.

 _...touché,_ Sylia thought as Priss hauled her to the wall, slammed her hard against it where she gulped in air for one brief, precious moment before Priss' lips cut her off, kissing her deeply and greedily, her tongue fucking Sylia like her mouth wasn't enough. Clearly more than just the softsuit was involved in this sim, since she could feel every inch of Sylia though her lips were touching air, and Sylia felt it too: she moaned and gasped weakly around the intrusion, her once carefully ordered thoughts splintered into scraps of _how did it come to this how is she this strong_ , and it was clear that she hadn't expected to lose.

Priss let up enough to growl against her mouth, "You asked for this." Rapid breaths chilled Sylia's lips, her heart hammering against Priss' breastbone, a beat she felt in every bruise and break. "Thought you could fuckin' take me in a fair fight? Thought it'd be easy to whip the street rat's hide?" She ground her body against Sylia's, feeling her ribs protest and her knees tremble at the whispers of pleasure and pain. "Don't think much of me, do you?"

 _No... I knew you were strong._ Sylia's thoughts were uneven, seeming to swell and fade with each laboured breath she took. _Just thought... I was stronger..._

"Well, you made your gamble." Priss grinned through bloodied teeth, drunk on her agonies. "Ready to pay up?"

Sylia's response was to reach up, tangle her hands in Priss' hair, and pull her in for a kiss... followed by a knee to the stomach.

Priss caught her leg and flipped her, but Sylia sprang up again, now rushing at her in a frenzy of fists, all decorum lost. They clinched and grappled, cuffing each other with hands made claws, Priss throwing Sylia into the wall, Sylia slamming her back. Blood streamed down Priss' forehead, and she wondered, dazed, at how something called a "softsuit" could be so sharp; a hook to her jaw stopped the wondering, and she felt her head smack the wall, over and over, until even the nerves in her teeth were alight.

She was floating now. Her face ached when she grinned, her gashes oozing blood. She could keep going, going, if this were a Boomer she'd never stop, but every blow sent electricky sparks all up and down her limbs and it was easier to coast, to trade sloppy kisses for Sylia's punches, to lean into her when she struck. Eventually Sylia caught on and stopped hitting her, pinning her shoulders to the wall, panting heavily.

 _You are enjoying this far too much,_ Sylia marvelled. _If I keep going, I'll kill you before you yield._

"Then kill me," said Priss with a woozy laugh, blood frothing from her lips. To her ears, it sounded like the most romantic thing in the world.

 _No,_ said Sylia, leaning in and kissing her just hard enough to hurt, and Priss thought that might be an even more romantic response. Between kisses she kept murmuring into her mouth, _No, never._

"Mmmmh, _fine,_ " she said as if it were some great sacrifice, and maybe it was. It would be so nice to just drift off like this, all punch-drunk and pain-silly, a pleasant haze of horniness haloing it all. But she woud let Sylia keep her for now, let Sylia's hands slide her down the wall, slowly to the floor where their bruised bodies mingled and sought a more gentle friction.

 _You look good like this too,_ said Sylia, and she knew she meant it from the way she stroked her thumbs over Priss' bloodied face, the fierce pride in her eyes as she locked gazes and slid her knee just so between Priss' thighs and rocked there, sending jolts of agony and ecstasy through her. Priss was only too happy to reciprocate, holding onto Sylia and angling herself so she could grind on the jut of her hip; and if when Sylia got close she clutched Priss hard and began to ride her with a violent urgency, one that made her feel like each stroke would cause her to shatter, she only thrilled to it that much more, every little stab of pain melting away into an endorphin rush that went straight to her clit.

She was trembling on the edge, but it was getting so hard to move. Everything was so heavy, and her vision kept darkening, and she wasn't entirely sure where she was; but her incoherent syllables were somehow understood, and Sylia cradled her close as she shuddered in her own climax, her fingers deftly circling until Priss arched up, gasping, sobbing, into Sylia's hand, the only point of stability in a world that was coming apart.

How she held onto consciousness she didn't know; maybe she hadn't, blacking out in such brief bursts she didn't notice. But time had smoothed into an illegible smear, her mind no longer tracking the moments until the adrenaline began to fade, rousing her body from its dream into a world on fire.

She crumpled against Sylia, a doll slashed from its strings, and wept: not a tense shuddering towards orgasm or the grateful sobbing of release, but a silent, purgative quake through which she could barely move or breathe. Every vein had been shot with acid, her skin one open, salt-laced wound, her muscles tight knots that could not unclench. She was a scream without end, but her mouth would not move, and nothing she could do made the pressure abate.

 _Sssh, it's all right._ Sylia stroked her hair and her back, and in brief bursts of clarity she cried for that too: that she'd subjected Sylia to this, to watching her suffer, to comforting her now though she was suffering herself. She tried to think some version of this at her, but her thoughts wouldn't make words; just little jerky wordless concepts, spasms of _pain_ and _you_ and _wrong_.

 _No, none of this is wrong,_ the thought came back at her. _Not as long as you had fun, anyway._

Had she had fun? Fun was very far away. But yes, she thought, it had been good, and right now it was bad but that would fade; and then it would be good again, once she had forgotten what it felt like to be dying and not be allowed to die.

 _...yeah,_ she managed to think at her. _You?_

She felt something from Sylia, a mixed little jolt of arousal and shame. _...yes,_ she said eventually. _More than I had wanted to admit. More than I could have admitted without you._ She fell quiet again, then finally murmured a _Thank you._

With Sylia distracting her from the pain, the haze had cleared just the tiniest bit. _...so bad for each other we're good for each other, huh?_

Sylia smiled just a little, or maybe she only felt it a little. _...something like that, yes._

They stayed like that for great warm swaths of time, engulfing waves of blackness during which Priss knew she must have slept, or at least lost consciousness. Briefly she would wake and find them still on the mat, and she would smile, lacking the strength for anything more, and go under again.

It was by about the fifth repeat of this that she realized the only person who could move her was her. She lifted a hand; it came away from the floor reluctantly, gummed by dried blood. She placed it on the wall, beside several other handprints of hers, and pushed herself up, fighting dizziness.

As she staggered to the door, leaning on the wall with every step, it hit her that this was when Sylia would have caught her. Sylia could be a cold-ass bitch, but she also couldn't remember when she'd last been wounded, too bad to stand, and hadn't stumbled into Sylia's waiting arms.

As small and selfish as it sounded, her heart twinged at the thought that she'd never know that again. Sylia could hold her, and that felt incredible, but she'd never be there to catch her again; she'd never do the fussy little things that Priss would never admit she missed, the little routines of taking care of her when she got trashed. Sometimes, she thought guiltily, she was sure she'd let herself take the hit just so Sylia could patch her up.

It was a stupid, petty dependence. Adults didn't act that way, and she loathed herself for having done it. She loathed herself for going into this half-expecting Sylia to be there at the end, ready to tend to her wounds. Sylia was a golem, a modern-day homunculus, and it was all her fault. She'd chased after her like some sad little puppy, near-murdered her for a chance to ease her own pain, then worn her as a living guardian now that she'd given her no choice but to become one. And still she wanted more?

Her self-directed monologue stirred Sylia awake. Seeing Priss leaning in the door frame, ready to pitch forward, she immediately pressurized the softsuit. Priss felt something grip her legs, her arms, holding her upright.

_Sylia...?_

_What are you doing, trying to walk?_ Sylia admonished. _You've lost blood, you're seriously dehydrated, you've got several broken bones... I probably gave you a concussion back there too._ She sighed. _Come on. We'll do it together._

One step after the other, Sylia guided her swaying movements, locking each of the hardsuit's legs in turn. Slowly, onerously, they hobbled out of the room, leaving a bloody trail of footprints behind.

 _So you know, after all that,_ Priss thought, _I still haven't gotten on a bike with you._

 _And you won't be for a while,_ said Sylia sternly. _I'm insisting on you getting at least two weeks' rest before anything else like this, even if that means I have to work from the bedroom._

Priss leaned on the elevator doors, mashing the _up_ button with clumsy fingers. _You mean two days, right?_ she pouted. _C'mon, I can't stay in bed for two weeks! I'll go nuts!_

Sylia smiled at her. _Weren't you just thinking you wanted me to take care of you?_

_Yeah, but there's a limit..._

The doors pinged open, and together, they stepped inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hide, or more popularly stylised hide but that's confusing to read in prose, is the former lead guitarist of X Japan. He died from self-strangulation, of an uncertain motive.
> 
> This was going to be a more realistic fight, but I had to give Priss credit for her incredible canonical ability to get wrecked. The woman is nigh immortal!
> 
> Check out the IPT (Isn't Priss Tough) entries here if you need a refresher: http://www.ravensgarage.com/dyn/index.html


	4. Knight Rider [E]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Priss and Sylia push themselves to their limits, part 2.
> 
> Since the beginning of this fic I have planned to write motorcycle sex. Two years on, following in a time-honoured tradition involving anime lesbians and vehicles, this is that chapter.

In the dim light of Sylia's bathroom, Priss held her bare leg aloft, running a washcloth idly over a single patch of skin. Her plan had been to take a bath, but somewhere along the way she'd gotten distracted by the sight of herself: the scars that glowed faintly beneath the simulated moon, the sudden paleness of her skin from all the time she was spending in her suit lately. Not to mention how she'd been laid up in bed this past fortnight, under Sylia's paranoid instructions. Her muscles had lost some of their tone in her convalescence; she'd have to work on that. Knight Saber or not, she preferred to keep in fighting shape. Just in case.

What kept drawing her eyes back, though, were her scars. After her fight with Sylia, they'd taken off the suit to find the woman underneath a shattered wreck; Sylia was amazed at how she'd ever managed to walk.

( _There were pieces of your femur poking out of your thigh!_ she'd said, aghast. _Standing should have been physically impossible! What are you even made of?_

 _Determination,_ Priss had replied with a smile.)

Now her injuries, frightening though they'd been, were marked only by reddish weals, soon to fade to white, then vanish. Priss' skin didn't hold scarring long, the same way her body burned through drugs: it took a lot to impact her seriously. Most people would have been relieved-- it was an unpleasant truth that looks mattered in her line of work, and being scarred up wouldn't improve her chances of getting signed by a record label. But she liked them, these imperfect knots of flesh that stood out from the rest, angry and defiant.

 _What do they mean to you?_ asked Sylia, watching her touch them with interest.

Priss was glad that Sylia's bathroom was a traditional one, equipped not in the Western style, as so many in Megatokyo were these days, but with a low stool and faucet for washing. Unlike Sylia, who treated everything as an excuse to luxuriate and linger, she usually just wanted to shower and be done with it; but this way she could cut the amount of time she spent without her helmet, only taking it off to wash her face and hair. It galled her to be so dependent, but the last time she'd tried just gritting her teeth and bearing it she'd come to her senses with a razor in hand, curled up next to the trash can she'd found it in, its contents upended all over the floor. That wasn't how she wanted to go out.

Thankfully, Sylia didn't mind watching Priss soap herself up. After all, she'd said, she might as well enjoy the time she now saved on her own personal care.

She ran a finger over the longest scar, tracing it from her kneecap almost to her inner thigh, gooseflesh rising on her skin. "Intimacy," she said eventually, wetting her lips. "Here-- you were inside me. For just an instant, I was open to you. Nothing between us."

Sylia listened attentively. _That still appeals to you, even though you live with it every day?_

"It appeals to my body," she said with a laugh and a shrug. "My mind doesn't really get a say."

 _If I could give you_ \-- Sylia raised a finger, and though Priss wasn't wearing her gloves she lifted her hand to her cheek, trailing it down the side of her face without meaning to do so -- _one scar, anywhere_ \-- her finger was drawing a line across her throat -- _where would it be?_

Priss swallowed. It was uncanny, the feeling of her hand moving on its own, tracing her collarbone, marking a divide between her breasts, her nail digging in and leaving a raised, red line. She thought about just letting Sylia explore her, but as her fingers wandered to her side her breath hitched and she retook control, splaying her hand there under her ribs.

"Here," she said, breathing unevenly.

_And how would I do it?_

She ran her fingers back and forth, calling up the image. "We'd be riding together. You wouldn't mean to, but you'd be there when I lost control, and you'd be holding on tight." Her other hand drew an arc in the air. "We'd go over the bars, and the bike would follow us... I'd break your fall, and you'd break the bike's. We probably wouldn't survive.

But in the moments before we lost consciousness, we'd look down at ourselves, all tangled up together... the bike cutting into our legs, the smell of gasoline all around, ready to catch fire. And you, you'd be lying against me right..."-- she dug her fingers in, making a thirsty little sound -- "here. We hit the ground with such force your bones tore through your skin and straight into mine, like fingers, interlocking. They'd have to cut us apart."

Priss saw the scene over in her head as Sylia pictured her words, a ghostly afterimage. _It's beautiful, in its way,_ she said at last. _I doubt I can manage that precise of a landing, of course, so it's not a scar I could give you. But there's poetry to it._

"You don't think I'm crazy?"

 _Priss. We've been over this._ Sylia sighed a little as Priss picked up the washcloth again, dabbing at purplish-green bruises the shape and size of Sylia's fists. _By almost any metric I can think of, you are far from sane. Ever since I met you, every time I've picked up the phone there's been a part of me that just expects to hear Mackie or Linna or Dr. Raven on the other end, telling me that you killed yourself, that you took an overdose, that you got in a crash and you're gone. When you take the helmet off, I'm always afraid the next thing I'll hear is Mackie's voice saying you're dead._

"...I'm sorry." _For being such a fuckup,_ she thought but didn't say, knowing that Sylia heard it anyway.

_Don't be. I bear more of the blame than you do. But anyway, this... what we feel. It's the least of the ways in which you're crazy._

Priss laughed a little. "Kinda missed the mark on 'comforting', there."

 _...You know what I meant._ At Priss' doubtful expression, she sighed again. _...no, you don't, and honestly I don't know what I'm saying either. Just that-- I'm worried this will kill you one day, and if I weren't so selfish, I'd probably try to stop you. But I know you... you'd only find some other way to self-destruct. And as long as we're doing it together, I can try to keep you safe, and that's more than I can say for some of the things you do._ Gently, she took control of Priss' arms, wrapping them around her shoulders. _Besides, if wanting strange and possibly fatal things makes you crazy, remember I'm the person who thought the answer to Megatokyo's problems was strapping jump jets to my back._

Priss' laughter was in earnest that time. "They were really cool jump jets, though," she said. "You know, I kinda miss getting to see you suit up. You looked pretty swell."

 _Thank you,_ said Sylia, blushing faintly. _I miss it too, sometimes._

She paused, hesitant to say more, but Priss knew there was something else on her mind, and kept her attention on her until she admitted it.

_...I miss having a body._

"...Sylia." Priss touched her hand to the top of her helmet, pretending it was Sylia's hair she stroked. She pictured her fingers combing through curls the colour of blueberries, remembering Sylia back to herself, but they both knew it wasn't the same.

Still she couldn't help but turn inward, kissing lips that were bruise-ripe and blueberry-sweet, if only in their minds. And while Priss caressed Sylia's mind, Sylia guided Priss' hands over her body once more.

***

"All right. What's this grand plan of yours?"

They stood in the garage beside Priss' new motorcycle. Like most bikes she'd ever owned, it was a fire-red slash of a thing, with a racer's frame and more engine than most people knew what to do with. It was sometimes more than Priss knew what to do with, but then she liked her beasts untamed. Knowing that the creature she straddled was just beyond her control was part of the thrill.

 _Simple._ Sylia smiled impishly at her. _You're worried about losing control and crashing us, correct? And while I must point out, as a matter of pride, that the hardsuit is more than strong enough to survive a crash, I think I can provide you with a little extra security... as well as a little extra fun._

"Well, that sure sounds like a good deal," said Priss. She got down beside the bike and began checking it over for roadworthiness. "So shoot."

 _I can put both of us in control._ She flashed a mental image of Boomer tendrils. _You ride the bike. I'll be it._

Priss opened her mouth. Then closed it again. Opened it, and closed it, until she felt sure she was doing a pretty good impression of a goldfish.

"You're going to take over the bike."

A nod.

"Put your consciousness inside it."

Nod.

"I'm going to get on your back and _ride you down the fucking highway._ "

_...No, we'll find some private roads. I don't want to put anyone else at risk._

Priss pressed her hand to her forehead. "Sylia, I love you, you crazy-ass bitch."

Sylia smiled. _I think that's a compliment?_

"The highest I know how to give."

_...So are you game?_

Was she game? To take flight on the back of this unhinged angel of death, to someplace where no one would find them? To experience her lover, herself, and her bike entwined into one? To ride Sylia Stingray?

Was this woman fucking kidding?

"Hell yeah." She swung her leg astride the bike, the Boomer in Sylia latching on and digging deep into its computerized mind, sparking it to life. Their sense of self expanded into the bike, flooding into the engine, the circuitry... hell, she could feel the naked road against her skin.

This was wild, and they hadn't even begun.

It had always been an attractive bike, and as with all her bikes, she tried to keep it that way; but now she saw it in a whole new light. Its sleek shell reminded her of a hardsuit, and she placed her hands on either side of the tank as if she were holding Sylia's waist, her thighs hugging the bike's trembling sides. She leaned into the seat; it smelled of wax polish and leather, and, she thought, just a little of perfume.

Gently she rolled on the throttle, unsure what the surge of power would do to the bike in this state-- or to Sylia. She soon found out as the machine between her legs leapt awake, the dials awash with colour, and her body lit up too. Warmth rolled over her skin, every atom seeming to pulsate, the chrome and fiber that encased her now a thousand tiny fingers pressing deep into her flesh.

Experimentally, she rolled it off and on a few times more.

"...Holy fucking shit."

Yes, that was having exactly the effect she thought it was. From below her, the engine raced with a growl that sounded more like a moan.

Of the experiences on her (now sorely outdated) bucket list, giving a bike a handjob had never been one, but only because she hadn't known the option existed.

She took a deep breath, her chest constricting. "All right then," she said, not sure she could actually stay astride this monster for more than a minute. She was already so turned on it was painful. "Let's rodeo."

She eased off the clutch, and the bike shot forward like a dart, eager to run. Fortunately she was used to bikes trying to buck her, and she stayed astride, even as every bit of power she fed the engine felt like fingertips dancing over her skin.

Newspapers whipped by them in the wind, the dirt of the city shaken loose by the engine's joyful roar. The people she passed knew nothing of their secret, seeing only a slightly oddly-dressed woman on a motorcycle, ignorant of the circuit their bodies made, the current they passed between them like a piece of candy on their tongues. _Very_ ignorant, she thought with a gasp, of the slick synthfiber suit that slid questing fingers between her thighs, parting the folds of flesh to see if Priss was wet enough to slip inside.

She was, and she very nearly bit her tongue. "Jesus," she hissed, trying to hold off, to not rock against Sylia here and now, to at least wait until they were out of downtown. But as soon as she'd calmed herself Sylia upped her game, curling those damnable fingers inwards in a motion that almost made her slam on the brakes.

The bike moved under her with intent, hinting at direction with subtle leans, the engine mewling for a gear change to set it free. Every bike she'd ever had had thrilled to speed. The ringing of an engine pushed to its sweet spot of revs, the shuddering of the chassis as it leapt over the asphalt: a bike could gasp and writhe in ecstasy. But she'd never had one that actually begged.

She obliged, shifting up to highway speeds and feeling hands cup her breasts in response. The lights streamed by faster, a neon blur, then vanished as Sylia slipped between two traffic cones with an effortless grace, diving into the dark.

She didn't know where they were going, but being held as she was gave good incentive to just shut up and trust. They were ascending now, and she gave Sylia more throttle, the bike roaring and bearing down hard, trembling beneath and within and all through her as she embraced this wild dancer, her chariot of fire, climbing and climbing until the veil of darkness broke and they were thrown into the stars.

"...Holy shit," she said again. The road arced high above Megatokyo, and ahead of them stretched higher still, the city rapidly falling away from them as they climbed. Here the smog was thinner, the air chiller but more breathable; and though only a few bright stars pierced through the canopy of grime, it was still more than she'd ever seen. "I didn't even know this place existed."

Sylia's voice was breathy, bass-toned, floating somewhere on the wind. _The Seiya Intercity Skyway. A project to connect Megatokyo and New Ichihara that fell through after Genom executives blocked funding. This is all that remains of it._

The cool breeze filtering through her helmet made her shiver. "A real road to nowhere, huh," she mused.

 _There's one more interesting place I haven't taken you,_ Sylia purred beneath her. _Give me all you have. And hold on tight._

Priss leaned into Sylia's chassis, shifting gears until she could go no higher and the engine sang out in joy. The "hold on" had been unnecessary: at speeds like this she could only mold herself to the bike, her chest level with the tank and her legs gripping hard, her slightest lean translated to the road. She was entering that space where she forgot herself, where she and the bike were one; except now it was more than a state of mind. It was all through her. She could feel herself in the tires, the incredible heat as the concrete tore at them, prickling, bordering on pain. She could feel the engine in her chest, the suspension in her knees, the electrical currents in her nerves. Her lower half seemed to have melted into the seat, into Sylia's fingers and the motions inside her, into enveloping, luscious warmth; her upper half was all shining chrome, slicing through the wind, a mirror to the stars.

She ran, faster, harder, tripping and twisting around the curves of the road, thrilling to the stresses that tugged at her frame, threatening to shake her body apart. She was already apart; she was photons of light, a streaking comet, a liquid-metal beast eating up the road, riding the wire between life and death and crashing and wanting and needing and breathing and burning and falling--

_\--Falling!_

She snapped alert. Up ahead of them the road yawned wide, the bay cavernous and black between its steel-beam jaws. She knew she should do something, take control, but there was no point in braking, they were coming up way too fast--

 _Trust me_ , said a voice in her ear, before the world went silent.

The bike leapt into the air, a glittering dolphin. Below them, the churning waters of the bay; and in the distance, far too far, the rest of the road, a jump they'd never make.

 _This is how we're gonna die,_ thought Priss, feeling oddly detached as she gazed into the bay below. _Well, it could be worse._

A thump and a screech shocked her out of her trance, the smell of rubber in the air, the familiar feeling of road rash spreading up her thighs. Except they were still upright, and the burning she felt was the tires protesting as they once again hit solid ground, touching down on the other side of the break.

Priss whooped, breaking out in giddy laughter. "You jumped the gap! You jumped the fucking gap!" She was shaking, clinging to the tank, adrenaline coursing through every nerve. "You fucking madwoman! You did that on purpose! Oh my god! I swear I'm gonna--"

_Wham._

***

 _...Can you move it?_ asked Sylia, gingerly nudging her arm from within.

She hissed in pain, but it was mobile. "It's not broken."

They lay near the skyway's buckled edge, by a crash barrier that read, on the side where Priss had landed, _BRIDGE OUT!_ The rear tire having failed to clear it, the bike hung over the barrier like a stunned prize fighter, handlebars caved in gruesomely. They'd landed on bare concrete-- no grassy shoulder to roll into in a romantic tangle. But below them the bay was afire with neon, an impressionist portrait of the skyline, and stars twinkled above their heads. For Megatokyo-- _no, for anywhere_ , thought Priss, because she wanted to believe, wanted at least one measure on which life had not deprived her-- it was beautiful.

Sylia gently took her hands from her and began unburdening her of her hardsuit, popping the clasps on her legs to let her crawl out.

"What about you?" said Priss. "Are you hurt?"

 _You didn't hit your head,_ Sylia said with a laugh, _so I'm fine. Even if you had, the hardsuit is tough._ She paused a moment before adding, _I felt it when you were, though. It was... quite electric._

Priss blushed. "...Did you plan that?" she asked as, cringing from the use of her arm, her hands undid the softsuit, stripping her to just above the waist. _Oh yeah, that'll be a sight for any passing helicops,_ she thought. _A bike wreck out on a stretch of expressway hundreds of feet up, somewhere people aren't even meant to be... and me lying next to it flashing my tits._ She threw a peace sign to the sky, just in case.

 _The jump? Yes._ Her fingers felt along her jawbone, then down to her sternum. _No broken ribs... that's good,_ said Sylia, though Priss noticed she'd only felt about halfway down.

"No, I mean the crash. Did you set it up?"

 _Unfortunate they'd put a barrier all the way up here, isn't it?_ Sylia said with a casual air. _Wonder whose idea that was._

The softsuit took over the examination from the waist down, a light pressure tracing around a burn on her inner thigh, the exact place she'd felt it when the tires had hit the ground. _Does it hurt bad?_

"Actually," she said, trying not to arch up as Sylia's touch stirred up flickers of pain, "it hurts kinda good." She'd been so close to coming when they'd gone down, and now her heart was revving again.

 _Good,_ said Sylia, satisfaction in her tone, followed by a small sigh as her touch went to other places. _I wish I could kiss you. Kiss every one of these little bruises better._

"Mmh." Sylia pressed a tender spot, bringing forth a sound from Priss that was half-pain, half-pleasure. "You know, I'm beginning to suspect you actually liked fussing over my poor beat-up self. Maybe as much as I enjoyed the fuss."

 _Of course I did,_ she said, and Priss knew from the way she quietened that the pleasure had been a guilty one. _But it's not an encouraging thing to tell a teammate. "You look good when you're in bandages."_

Priss let out a snerk. "Hey, it would've eased _my_ conscience sooner."

 _Perhaps._ Sylia touched a finger to the split in her lip. _You were so different in those times. So honest when you were vulnerable, about what you wanted. Of course I thought I was reading into it... you were in pain, delirious sometimes. But you'd hold my hand._ She trailed Priss' hand down to cup her other, stroking her thumb over bruised knuckles. _You'd tell me to stay._

Priss swallowed. "Stay," she whispered; and then "oh," as she felt a weight like Sylia's hips press against her own.

 _Ssh, now._ Invisible hands on her waist, pressing her down to the concrete. _I'll take good care of you._

She moaned softly, grinding the air, the pressure of her suit so uncannily real that her hands groped for the back of a woman who wasn't there. A playful battle of wills began then, as Sylia took her hands back and began to use them on her; _you had a piercing here,_ she said, lightly pinching a nipple, and Priss squirmed at just how much information this woman had on her: a suit monitoring her biometrics night and day, scanning for injuries and illnesses, for the slightest change in structure. And then there was what the nanos knew...

"Yeah, I... let it heal," she said in between gulps of air, sliding her free hand down and working herself frantically. "Got annoying. All my stage clothes caught on it." She laughed, breathless. "Mmh, wait, but my body..."

 _...Is a clone, yes._ Smiling, Sylia took her hand back and held it far from the source of Priss' need. _But I remember the original._

Priss whined, her hips bucking against air that really was empty, now. "Ngh, fuck-- don't _do_ that, so close..."

 _You shouldn't be moving around so much,_ Sylia taunted her. _Why don't you let me decide when you're ready?_

"As if," she growled, reclaiming her other hand. But it was the injured one, and it hurt to move it like she needed, hard and fast. She tried to push through the pain, but she could only manage a few strokes before she had to stop, wincing; and then Sylia was holding it down "for her own good" and brushing _just_ the right spot with her other hand, then moving away to trace patterns on her thighs, then back again, teasing and stopping, teasing and stopping until Priss wanted to scream.

 _You could beg,_ Sylia whispered in her ear.

Priss struggled to get control of her other hand. "You could... go... fuck yourself..."

Sylia laughed, and there was pure delight in it. _I thought I already was._ Her hand slid up to encircle Priss' throat. _How about I raise the stakes?_

Priss bit back a curse, her eyes almost rolling back into her head as Sylia stroked up and down her throat, tracing the arteries there. The fact that it was her own hand threatening to press down, her own body turned against her, that made it even better somehow-- drove a raw, low sound from her lungs as Sylia finally made good on her threat.

 _Will you beg now?_ She could feel her pulse hard and hot under Sylia's hand, her own hand, alarmed at suddenly having nowhere to go. She was getting warm and hazy, her thoughts receding; all the blood that should have gone to her brain was rushing to the juncture of her thighs instead.

Apparently deciding she was having too much fun, Sylia pressed down with her palm, abruptly cutting off her air. She could have cosily passed out from the blood loss; now she was forced to struggle. _How about now?_

She tried to swallow, to rasp in tiny amounts of air, but she knew it was only a matter of time. Still she held out through stubborn pride, not wanting to knuckle under until the very last moment, until sheer, animal panic broke her will.

"...okay," she mouthed, voiceless.

Sylia let up on her just the tiniest bit, the softsuit stroking lazy circles on her thighs. _Just okay?_

She swallowed roughly. "...fuck-- Syl, please... 'm begging..."

She felt Sylia flush with desire at those words, and that very nearly sent her over, her hand bringing her the rest of the way, the softsuit seeming to spasm and shake and turn to liquid along with her. She collapsed to her side on the road, drinking deep, damp breaths of the sweetest air she'd ever tasted, listening to her rock-show of a pulse pound in her skull.

A few minutes passed before she started noticing it elsewhere, too. She expected it in her head, her heart, her neck, but she hadn't expected it to be so fierce under her ribs, or the skin there so hot.

She sat up, peeling her softsuit off the rest of the way, wincing as it pulled away from her ribs only with effort. It was soaked with blood. So was she.

With effort she crawled to her hardsuit and rolled it over, seeing the cause of the damage. Something-- the handlebars, she saw now, the barrier could have never made such a dent-- had struck her so violently that one of the front panels had crumpled in at the joint, a known weak spot, forcing the metal plate into the spot below her ribs.

 _...The hardsuit's weak spot._ A weakness they'd discovered when Anri had stabbed her. A weakness that was burnt into her mind, to the point that it was where she'd stabbed Sylia, even though she'd been out of her suit at the time.

 _So that's why you wanted to be scarred there,_ said Sylia. _You were living something out, something that had played over and over in your mind... probably without you even being aware of it._

Living out her trauma? Maybe. But what she noticed as she looked down at the wound was how it obliterated Anri's scar: the scar that had started this whole nightmare, the scar that had brought her so much guilt and pain. Sylia's scar was also no more, melted into the hardsuit, melded with hers. This one would stand for them all.

"...No, not living out," she said, the words slowly coming together. "More like moving beyond."

She thought back to the crash, the whole scenario, so obviously staged by Sylia. "You controlled the bike. You did everything... so I could have my crazy wish."

Sylia put on a look of mock horror. _Priss, that would be a crime!_ The look slipped, revealing the slightest of smiles. _I would never confess to such a thing._

They both burst out laughing, lying back against the concrete.

 _...Of all the damn places to find your happy ending,_ thought Priss.

 _It's hardly conventional,_ Sylia concurred, placing one of Priss' hands in her other and squeezing it gently. _But it is ours._

Breathless and amazed at themselves, they stared up at their meager compliment of stars, into a universe that did, after all, have some small wonders left in it.


	5. Good Night, Sweet Knight

"It's hard to do proper date things when you're dating an armoured suit," Priss complained. They lay sprawled on the couch, a news ticker crawling across a screen neither were watching, its headlines reflected back-to-front and upside down in the bottle of wine before them. A single glass sat unused, Priss having long since progressed to drinking straight out of the bottle. "I mean, we can go out to eat, but I still look like I'm eating alone. Can't really book a romantic table for one."

Sylia echoed Priss' voice back to her in perfect, computer-facilitated pitch. _"Oh dear, my date didn't show up. Looks like I'll be eating this parfait all by myself."_

Priss snickered. "Nah, you sound too calm about it. You gotta sound _angry_ and _unhinged!_ " She stood up, making wild gesticulations at an imaginary waiter until she pitched herself off-balance, tumbling back onto the couch with a giggle and a thump.

 _I think we're already a little too drunk to drive anywhere,_ said Sylia, looking at the mostly-drained bottle of wine. _...Oh. But I have an even better idea._

"What?" Priss stretched out across the full length of the couch, propping her feet on the armrest. One of the benefits of dating an armoured suit: you didn't have to share. "An' is it more fun than just snuggling here with you until we fall asleep?"

Sylia beamed a glittering smile into her mind. _How do you feel about flying?_

***

Of the four hardsuits, Priss' was the one least well designed for flight. Sylia had traded off weight concerns against offensive and defensive capacity, assuming that Priss would prefer to ride than soar, a calculation which had served them well. However, after being trapped inside the less capable suit for some time now, and having seen Priss' awe at the Megatokyo stars, she'd begun to rethink that decision.

A secret of hers was that she thrilled to powered flight, for some of the same reasons Priss thrilled to motorcycles. Whether gliding through water or air, she loved the frictionless feeling of being free, of escaping gravity and, with it, the burdens of flesh and thought. It was part of the reasoning behind her suit designs, specifically the softsuit, which was designed to suspend the user, when at rest, in a buoyant, pressureless state.

Designing a full flight pack for Priss had thus become a priority, and with the help-- and occasional sarcastic commentary-- of Priss herself, she had managed to complete the project in a matter of weeks. Now all that was left was to test it.

 _Just so we're clear,_ said Sylia as they got into the elevator, _no populated areas. And stay away from the bay, at least for now. I don't want casualties of any kind._

"That doesn't leave much."

_The construction zones south of the Fault should be fine, if you want to go low. Only Boomers would be out there this late in the evening. Stick to the rooftops until then._

Down below the city blazed neon, but the night was pleasantly chill as they stepped out onto the roof. This world and that were separate spheres, as they'd learnt from countless Knight Saber operations. People never looked up.

Priss poised herself on the edge, inching her foot over the lip of the roof. She hadn't done this much, but there was always a squirminess in her stomach whenever she got close enough to look down. The ground under her heels, toes dipped into the air, she felt suspended between worlds, between possibilities: flying and falling, dying and living. Some people feared that line, afraid the tension might drive them to cross it. She found that tension exquisite.

She flared the jets on low, going over the edge at a single whispered word in her ear: _fall._

They free-fell for a second, the sidewalk screaming up at them, then at the last moment jetted away, the blue-white smoke trailing them like ribbons. Under their own power they surged skywards, between the skyscrapers, out of the rat maze, towards a blurry moon.

For the first time, she actually felt like a superhero.

 _Lovely, isn't it?_ The sensation of arms wrapped around her waist, and suddenly it was like Sylia was carrying her through the sky.

She really was Batman after all, Priss thought, still a touch tipsy. Did Batman actually carry people to safety? No, that was Superman. Wait, what was the point of being a bat if you couldn't actually fly? Superheroes were kind of lame when she thought about it.

The made-up kind, at least. The real kind... well, they were pretty fucked up. But she could live with fucked up, pressed against her back and whispering deadly suggestions into her ear, taking her on a half-drunken flight over the city. Fucked up was honest. Fucked up fucked her on her knees and liked it. It didn't pretend to be anything it wasn't.

 _No rules, no people... nothing here is like anything down there,_ Sylia mused, almost at the same time. _We're so free._

Priss laughed. "You know, when I first met you, you were about nothing but the rules." She would have elbowed Sylia if she could have, but she had to settle for thinking about it. "Did having a little me in you change you that much?"

 _Not at all,_ she said. _The rules are the leash I keep myself on because it's safer for everyone. They're necessary even if I don't always like them. I still believe that._

She smiled a little. _But you have to take the leash off sometimes, even if it's just in private. You just helped me see that there were times when I can do that with others, too._

"Heh. Right." As they spun around a radio antenna, a brief mid-air pole dance, she thought back to her conversation with Linna. "Me on the other hand... I'm always trying to be free. But then I realized there were times it just hurts more than it helps."

 _We really are a good team,_ said Sylia fondly.

"Yeah." Priss smiled back. "We are."

They dove down again, to where the city became a pale mirror of itself: the glow of ramen joints and pachinko parlours, the warm hubbub of people, disintegrating into the skeletons of skyscrapers and the ceaseless toil of Boomer labour. Even the trash here was faded, papers and food wrappers so old that the sun had finally managed to bleach them through the smog. The only people who came here were people who didn't want to be seen, and that made it dangerous. But Priss had her suit, and she had Sylia. A few common thugs couldn't faze her.

They wound through tight alleys, a labryrinth of streets strung with abandoned clotheslines, storefront signs unreadable through the grime, scraps of people's snuffed-out dreams. For Priss, it brought back memories of the Quake: seeing the detritus of people's lives kicked to the curb, once precious toys and trinkets now ownerless and forlorn. It made her want to cling to what she had now. The urge filled her to run away with Sylia right then, to fly to a place where the stars were closer, to see everything they could see before it was gone.

The scaffolding had started to crowd out the sky. Having gone low, they were forced to stay low, dodging piles of rubble and rebar. Above them the silhouettes of Boomers shifted silently, eyes glinting.

A cry echoed through the maze. It didn't sound human.

Priss pulled up short, hovering. "Shit! No way!"

Again the thing screeched. _Definitely gone rogue,_ said Sylia. _Well, at least we're dressed for the occasion._

Priss' heart began to pound. "...Sylia."

_What's wrong?_

"I told you... I don't wanna do this." She felt pathetic saying it. It was one thing to commit to a bloodless life when you were sitting at home, but right now, a Boomer was going berserk and putting lives at risk. She couldn't just turn away... could she?

 _It's your choice,_ said Sylia evenly. _I won't think less of you either way._

She _couldn't_ just turn away. But the thought of going into battle again, feeling all those fucked-up feelings again, wanting to do it, hating to do it, wanting to vomit and to paint her face in blood... watching another one die, from not being fast enough, from being too fast, from standing here wallowing in her own damn selfishness...

"...god dammit...!" Priss ground her teeth, clutching at her helmet, sinking to her knees in the dust. "What do I do, Syl? I have a duty--no, listening to that feeling's what got Sylvie killed! I can't do that again! I can't... if there's even a chance I might have to..."

Sylia gripped her shoulder through the softsuit. _This isn't going to be like Sylvie._

"But what if, what if, _what if..._?" She shook her head violently. "That's what my head's always screaming! I can't get away from that feeling... every time, that feeling like _time stopped there,_ like everything is happening again..."

 _Easy, Priss._ The suit began to pressurize, squeezing her whole body in a gentle embrace: nothing like a human one, but pleasant. Not pleasant enough, though, to banish the fear. _Come on. Let's get out of here._

She wanted to go, but her body wouldn't listen. Her muscles felt locked, like someone had taken them away from her.

 _...Priss, what are you doing,_ said Sylia, a wary note in her voice.

"I'm not doing it! You're doing it!"

Wary turned to urgent. _I'm not doing anything! Priss, you have to move!_

Now she felt Sylia try to take charge of her impulses, to nudge her into motion, and Priss knew she'd been telling the truth. But whatever was paralyzing Priss was blocking Sylia now, too.

It had to be him. It had to be him, he was alive, he was taking them back over he was--

 _No!_ Sylia snapped it like an order. _Largo is dead, Priss! You're just panicking!_

"Then why can't I move?"

_Because you've overloaded your body with adrenaline and it's reacting the only way it knows how!_

"Then why are you yelling at me to move when you know I can't?" she screamed, on the verge of tears.

Sylia screamed back. _Because now I'm panicking as well, you idiot!_

Something hard connected with her chin, and as the uppercut threw her skywards she felt the world, the fear, falling away, a slow receding to white. Her body described a lazy arc, like she was submerged; _that makes no sense,_ she thought, _I never hit water_ \-- but the ground was a long time in coming, her fall so slow that when she did hit the asphalt she barely felt it. The sound of her impact echoed in her ears.

 _What... just happened?_ She tried to flip up her visor, and her hand passed through air. She wasn't wearing it.

Her eyes snapped open. Frantic hands patted the sides of her head. Had her helmet gotten knocked off?

"Shit, shit, shit, this is not the time..." She stood up. Her vision spun. She ignored it, scanned the scene; her eyes wouldn't focus.

Fuck, she was going down hard this time. It didn't usually hit this fast, but then she'd already been freaking out. Or perhaps hitting the ground with her bare head had fractured her skull; it didn't feel fractured, but then she didn't feel much. She put her hand up into her hair, almost confused by the feeling of _having_ hair, being able to touch it. It came away clean. No blood. She wasn't dying.

She felt like she was dying. _That Boomer's still out there!_ she told herself; sitting down on the sidewalk was a bad idea, but she couldn't make herself believe it. She sat, only half aware of the thundering footsteps nearby, the sounds of people screaming. It sounded fake, like a movie. She laughed. _Not real. I'm hallucinating! None of it's real._

She tried to lie down and sleep it off, because clearly she was in her trailer, having a bad trip, her neurons misfiring. But something kept nagging at her, a _did I leave the door unlocked?_ sort of feeling, but bigger. _You have to get up!_ it screamed. _Get up! Find Sylia!_

"...Sylia!" Shit, she was too far gone to even keep track of what was wrong! She ran to the nearest pile of rubble and got down on hands and knees, sifting aimlessly through the scrap, but everything looked like everything else: all metal and Boomer bits, Boomer wires, disembodied Boomer faces stuck gnashing their teeth; Boomers with their eye sockets hollowed out, a dark, organic sludge squirming inside. Boomers with her face, with Sylia's face, with Cynthia's, Anri's. The sludge poured forth, hundreds of black-oiled slugs, crawling for her.

"Sylia!" she screamed on repeat, listening with her ears, with her mind, anything to find her. "Sylia, please... please..."

A shadow fell over her, and she looked up.

Towering, framed by the bones of buildings yet unbuilt, the legacy of the Second Quake and all that it had toppled, stood a Boomer.

 _The_ Boomer.

It held in its hand a skull, a shape, an absurd abstract of a head, as if to put on some Boomeresque parody of Shakespeare. What would a Boomer's soliloquy be like? she wondered; a tirade against human supremacy? A worker's call to arms? But it turned out that Boomers spoke in actions, for just as Priss' failing mind understood what it was holding, it made its statement plain.

_Crunch._

Priss stood aghast, the hardsuit helmet sparking in the Boomer's grip, one of the radio ears snapping off as it squeezed tighter. It opened its hand, and the rest of the helmet slid from its fingers to the ground.

_Clang._

"--no no no NO _FUCK YOU!_ " Priss leapt at the Boomer, clawing ferally, yanking and swinging on its arm like a child trying to tear down a jungle gym. She tore at its plating, exposing tubes and circuitry, ramming her elbow guard over and over into the hole she'd made until thick yellow gore spurted out. Finally she thrust her gun-arm into its armpit and pounded it with shots, the metal caving and the cables rupturing. With howls of rage and triumph and grief she ripped off the limb, hot oil spattering her face, and swung it directly back into the Boomer's head.

" _Fuck you!_ " she yelled with each blow, as if the Boomer heard or cared. In fact it seemed faintly bemused by it all, this tiny woman wailing on it with its own arm, staring impassively down at her until finally her strength gave out and she stood panting, shaking, her curses turned to inarticulate whimpers.

 _Are you done yet?_ the Boomer seemed to say, tilting its head in an almost curious manner before drawing back its one remaining fist.

"...fuck you," was all she could bring herself to say, before something in front of her, faster than her brain could process, went _blatta-blatta-THUD._

The source of the _thud_ became obvious as the dust cleared from around it, the decapitated Boomer now just one more scrap pile among the rest. The source of the other sound stepped out from the wreckage, machine gun pointed, scanning the sidelines.

"Leon," said Priss without affect. The man's image wavered and blurred: a filmstrip burning up, a negative left out in the sun. A memory without context. Leon was someone, and she was someone, of that she was aware. But the world had stopped spinning around one particular someone, and she had not learned to live in this world without gravity, a world more loosely formed.

Sylia was gone. Not gone like she'd taken the helmet off, not fuming in her penthouse refusing to see her, not hiding behind the couch the whole time. Gone, the way they'd all gone, with paltry fanfares that never felt real. The collapsing of a house. The bellow of a gun. The patter of blood on her motorcycle helmet. The words _I wanted to be free, like you._

Such small, weak things. Nothing that prepared you for an instant to come and pass, leaving you stranded in a distant land where you'd never again touch someone or see their face; where the scaffolding of your life was wrenched from between your ribs, and yet you were expected to keep on standing.

She was always the one left standing.

Gingerly she knelt down, her eyes on Leon all the while, so that she would not have to look at what she touched. She made an absurd attempt at putting it on; of course it didn't work, the thing now crumpled down to half its size, its innards leaking dark fluid onto her hands. She stared at Leon helplessly.

Leon ran up to her, asked questions Priss couldn't hear and to which she just shook her head. She seemed to have forgotten how to actually cry, the feeling all knotted up around her chest and throat and head, pleading to be let out.

He took her chin in one hand, tapped his other against her cheek. _Hey, wake up,_ he was probably saying, or _Talk to me._ She'd stopped trying to focus on his lips, which moved without sound or meaning, when she found her head abruptly jarred to the side. He'd hit her hard.

Before she knew what was happening her body had moved, her hands pinning him by the throat against his stupid cop car. His lip was bloody; she'd struck back, apparently. Her words sounded like they were coming from someone else's mouth.

"Only one person," she snarled, leaning on his windpipe, "touches me like that, and she's _dead!_ "

"Jesus, okay!" he croaked, holding up his hands. "I'm sorry!"

She eased up on him, shoving him back into the wall as she let go. He clutched at his throat, wheezing thinly.

"...I'm sorry, I shouldn't have hit you. Just. I need you to listen. Please." He looked her in the eyes, speaking slowly, still half-hunched like she might hit him again. "Where are the others?"

In response, she bent down and picked up the helmet by his feet. She held it up for him to see.

"Okay." He held up a hand. "I get it, you got hurt, you can't hear me-- shit, I really shouldn't have slapped you, I'm sorry." He pulled out his datapad, tapped out something out, then handed it to her.

 _Where are your friends?_ read the screen. She looked up at him, baring her teeth, snipping the syllables off every word.

"Everyone I loved is already dead."

***

She sat in the back of Leon's squad car, with no memory of how she'd gotten there. Leon was driving, that other man-- Daley?-- beside her in the back, and they were talking but she'd lost them again, and then all at once the sound seemed to rush in and she caught--

"--who she knows."

She blinked blearily. "Who who knows?"

"Hm?" Leon turned to her, cell phone in hand. "--oh hey-- she's coming round a little. Hold on."

Priss leaned against the window, her cheek pressed up against the glass. The chill of it on her skin felt good, or at least present. Outside, it was raining.

"--in shock. Priss?"

"What?"

"You can hear me, yeah? You okay?"

"Uh." She looked down at the helmet in her hands. The front opening was crushed in on itself, an open maw forced closed. Around its edges, chunks of glass stood up like jagged teeth. She ran her finger over one of them, watching the blood that seemed to come from nowhere. What had the question been?

"Hey, careful, you'll cut yourself," said Daley, ignoring the fact that she already had. That was fine; she was ignoring it too. It was easy to ignore when it didn't feel like anything. He tried to take the helmet from her, but she shook her head and gripped it more tightly.

"--no, she's-- she's really a mess-- look, does this woman have _any_ next of kin? Priscilla Sonoda Asagiri, lost her license last month--"

"...Stingray."

Leon looked back over his shoulder. "Huh?"

Daley turned to Priss. "Stingray like the entrepreneur? The woman who owns like half of Megatokyo? That Stingray?"

She nodded urgently.

"Sylia Stingray. So she's got her hands in this whole Knight Sabers thing. You know, I really should have guessed." Leon was half musing to himself, the phone cradled in the crook of his neck. "--oh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, some interesting info here. Turns out the Knight Sabers--"

"Sylia's dead."

The voice from the front seat went silent. Then, more quietly. "...Jesus. No way."

"...Mackie. Mackie Stingray." She looked out through the window at the Lady's 633 building: a lighthouse pulsing through the brackish smog, the sentry away but the lights all on, calling her, calling her home. "He's the only one left, now. Gotta tell him."

The poor kid's sister, the last of his family, was dead. She remembered the first time that had happened to her. Somehow, she kept losing them. They kept slipping from her fingers like little fish. _Stingray._ Wasn't that a fish in English? Little silver fish slipping through her fingers, silver chrome and seawater green in the blue.

You find yourself thinking the strangest things when you've lost someone, she thought.

The car swung left around a bend. "Hate to have to ask you this, kiddo," said Leon. "But do you know where we can find her body?"

She held up the helmet again. Leon opened his mouth to rebut when Daley spoke up.

"Leon," he said. "Have you considered that she might be telling the truth?"

Leon gave him a skeptical look. "That that piece of scrap metal she's carrying around is..."

"Downloaded consciousness. Nanotech." Daley reached a hand out to touch the helmet, but she jerked it away, all but growling. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen Sylia around the store lately. If she was really behind the Knight Sabers and all this technology, I wouldn't put it past her to have been dabbling in nanotech intelligence." He looked at Priss. "Is that what happened?"

She nodded, not looking up.

"And she didn't have any sort of... backup?" asked Daley. "She didn't put her original body in cryo or anything?"

"No," said Priss, stroking the helmet's jawline. The future had contracted once again, leaving her with only the now. There was no moving past this moment. The truth might as well come out. "Because I killed her."

The car made another sharp shift in direction. She curled up tighter in her seat, watching raindrop-stingrays chase each other down the glass, sodium orange in the streetlamps' glow.

***

Leon sat across the table from her, leaning his forehead on his hands. His every motion screamed, _This isn't happening. I don't want to be here._ On that front she could entirely sympathize.

"So let me get this straight. You're confessing to the crime of killing Sylia Stingray."

Priss rubbed at her shoulder beneath the simple white prison garb. "Yes."

"Was it murder?"

"What?"

Leon sighed. "Did you intend to kill her?"

"No." She stared at a stain on the table. "But it felt good."

Daley, hovering around the perimeter of the room, looked at her with concern in his eyes. "...Are you sure you don't want a lawyer?"

"I want Sylia."

Leon shrugged helplessly at Daley, then turned back to Priss. "And this... when you say you killed her, you're talking about her original body. Not this." On the table between them sat the helmet, sealed in an evidence bag. Through her screams, threats and violence Leon had pried it from her hands, needing two other officers to restrain her; as soon as her cell was locked behind her she'd howled obscenities at them, throwing herself over and over against the door until her body cried uncle, and a little beyond that. _She's either a wild animal or she's completely unresponsive,_ she'd heard Leon say later, passing by her door.

"Neither," said Priss simply. "It was her nanotech clone."

Leon and Daley looked at each other. 

"Her clone," said Leon, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What happened to the _original_ Sylia?"

"She was absorbed into the fusion Boomer that Largo created when he possessed me. I absorbed her to save her life."

Leon just stared at her. "...Run that by me again."

She did, though she could tell that by the end of her explanation he was no better off.

"All right." Leon took a deep breath in. "So you were a Boomer. Sylia was... some sort of Boomeroid. You fused; her original body was destroyed in the fusion. Then later, you attacked her clone, after which she absorbed herself into your hardsuit, which was unfortunately destroyed-- at least, the relevant part-- in the Boomer attack yesterday evening."

He exhaled, tapping his notepad with his pen. "...Legally, we can't do anything with this. A Boomer can't be charged with a crime, only put down-- plus the Boomer that did it doesn't exist any more. I can't charge you as a human for what you did in a fused Boomer body that was only partly yours." He held out his hands in defeat. "As for clones created with nanotechnology... I don't think there are even laws on the books, but I'm guessing that they also don't count as human." He picked up the helmet. "And the Boomer that did this was already destroyed. There's no crime here."

Priss rose halfway from her seat, her fingers curling into fists. "So you're saying that her death doesn't mean anything? It's not even a crime?"

She watched him try not to flinch and fail. "I didn't say that. But I can't _charge_ it as a crime, and frankly, you don't want me to." He gestured at her with his pen, the other hand rubbing his temples. "Listen, Priss-- I get that you're really freaking out right now. You've just lost someone, you feel guilty as hell, and you want someone to punish you. But if I have you shipped off to prison in the state you're in, you're gonna be dead within the week."

She sat back down, pulling her folded arms to herself. "I don't care." 

"...I know you don't. And trust me, I'm really sorry that that's where you're at. But I do care, and I don't want that on my conscience." 

"So you're just letting me go?" 

Leon slid a hand across the table towards her. She turned away. "I really think the best thing I could do for you would be to take you back home. You said Sylia's brother survived her?" She nodded. "Well, I think the two of you are really gonna need to be there for each other. Go and be with him, and grieve, okay?" 

_Grieve._ The word brought back that awful feeling of disconnection, of wanting to cry but having nothing come out save these little spurts of rage. The place where her emotions should have been was hollow. She'd burnt through all her gas. 

She hid her face in her hands, her fingers digging into her forehead in an attempt to release the tears trapped behind it. But all her engine could manage was a dry cough. 

Slowly, she nodded.

"Just hang tight here for a few." He pushed himself up from his chair. "I'll drive you home."

***

He wasn't driving her home. If she couldn't tell from the route, the fact that she was back in cuffs was a dead giveaway.

_"Listen, you may have been able to swallow that crap about clones and nanomachines, but this isn't one of your TV dramas, Daley, this is real life!" Leon was pacing a tight few steps in front of Daley, back and forth. "There's no way all of what she said could've happened in the time frame you gave!"_

_"So you think she's lying?" Daley drummed his fingers against the wall at his back. "You think she really killed Stingray and she's trying to cover her slip?"_

_"No, I don't think she killed her at all." He pushed his hand through his hair. "In fact, until we have more evidence, I'm doubting Stingray's even dead. That woman's got so many fingers in so many pies she'd make a baker blush. If she'd bought the farm we'd be seeing evidence of it before now."_

_Daley took in Leon's nervous tics and, lifting one eyebrow, wordlessly held out his cigarette. Leon took a deep drag, then offered it back._

_Daley waved him off. "You look like you need it more than I do." He caught Leon's eye, and reached out to clasp his shoulder, stopping him in his pacing. "It's because it's Asagiri, isn't it? That's why this is getting to you."_

_Leon sucked on the cigarette again, grateful for it after all. "I don't... you don't know what they do to people in those places, Dale. It's like something out of the frickin' Stone Age. But I don't know what else we can do."_

_"Places?" Daley raised his eyebrows. "What are you talking about?"_

_"Priss needs to see a doctor. Badly. And I'm ninety-nine per cent sure that doctor's gonna have her declared insane."_

"You think I'm crazy."

Leon kept his eyes on the road. "I think something very bad has happened to you. I don't know what it is, but there're people who are better equipped to figure it out than I can."

She lunged forward in her seat and saw the fear flash in his eyes, the dregs of her anger making one last attempt to ignite. "What, you scared of me, huh?" She made a noise of disgust. "Good. Go ahead and be scared, pig. Never should've fucking trusted you."

She could tell that hurt him, and it felt good, just a little.

"If your own statement is anything to go by," said Leon evenly, "you're a murderer. If it's not, then you're delusional. I'm sorry, Priss, but you're not giving me a lot of options here."

She flopped back against the headrest. "Doesn't matter anyway," she grunted. "Do what you want with me. Oh, and don't forget to tell yourself you're being a hero." She turned her face to the window, sliding her hands down to slowly, silently unbuckle her seatbelt. "Just like I did."

Her cuffed hands went over Leon's head, choking him with the chain. Tires and people screamed as they scraped against the sidewalk, Leon dodging around a woman and her toddler only to swerve too far in the other direction, the brakes of oncoming cars taking up the cry.

"Priss!" It came out as a gurgle. "You're gon... ugh..."

Leon's hands fell from the wheel. Priss shoved his limp form into the passenger seat, leaving him sprawled against it like a drunk, limbs akimbo. Taking the wheel, she cut back into her lane and stepped on the gas.

Stop lights blurred and receded to a chorus of horns. Lady's 633 was on the other side of town; she'd have half the cops in the city on her tail by then, and she realized she had no idea what her plan was. She'd begged the cops to lock her up, then fled from them. She'd given up fighting, yet here she was with Leon unconscious in the seat beside her, dead for all she knew. She was running to a place that didn't exist, to a home that was no longer home for her, to a dream of walking through the door and falling into the arms of a woman who wasn't there.

She wanted Sylia back. That was all. That was all.

The pain seethed under her skin. It oozed out from her pores, silver and blue, pink and green, her nanos mirroring the only other forms they'd known. Sylia's fragmented memories entwined with the remains of Largo's code, recalling sleek chrome curves and silvered flesh. She gripped the wheel harder, gritting her teeth against the building pressure, the plastic cracking in her grasp.

A strange sort of clarity filled her then, in that moment where she straddled humanity and Boomerhood, at the juncture of Largo and Sylia and herself. It came to her like a koan, or a poor-taste joke: _why does a Boomer go "boom"?_ Why were these creatures so prone to breaking down in the most horrifying of ways? Why were they so unstable?

The question contained its answer. _The human mind,_ said Sylia, _is fragile at best. An attempt to replicate an already flawed system... it can only result in more errors. This was my father's folly._

"...Sylia?" she said out loud.

She thought she heard Sylia's words, but in the voice of her own thoughts. _Something's fused in our brain... a circuit bridged by the meltdown. It's calling up the remnant personality data._

A meltdown. So that was what this was. Hot ash dripped from her cheeks, wisps of smoke slipping from under sloughing skin. Her humanity was literally crumbling away. It felt not unpleasant, like a sigh.

Next to her, Leon stirred, then stared. "Th'hell...?" His eyes widened. "Priss... What's... what's happening to you?"

She touched her face. "Oh. This..." A weak chuckle escaped her. It hurt to laugh. "I guess you could say this is the face of the loser."

His expression was quizzical, his hand hovering over his gun, clearly hesitating. "...I don't understand."

"Sorry," she said, tapping her head. "Little inside joke."

She looked back to the road. "I think I'm dying, Leon."

He stared at her, still not comprehending.

"I finally get it... why Boomers go ballistic. When they feel too much... they're not built to handle human emotions, but they have them anyway. Sylia dealt by locking hers up." She let out a dry huff. "I'm not so good at that myself."

"Forgive me for saying so, but you don't exactly sound upset." He rubbed at the red ring around his throat. "Actually I'd say you're calmer than I've ever known you."

Now that he mentioned it, he was right. Along with everything else, she felt like her anger was melting away. "Maybe because I don't feel like I'm alone any more."

 _Such irony,_ said Largo, or what was left of him. _That it should be in death that we finally achieve our desires._

Priss rolled her eyes, but couldn't help but smile. Largo couldn't get to her now. He was no longer anything real, just a stray bit of code she almost felt sorry for. "Or something like that."

"Like what?" Leon asked, then clearly thought better of it. "...Never mind." He swiveled in his seat, craning his neck to see behind them. "Hey, uh, don't look now, but... we're kind of being tailed."

A constellation of police cars lit up her rear-view mirror, sirens crooning. The strobes flashed afterimages into her brain, little pinpricks of pain and heat.

"We're fusing," she said softly. "I don't know what's going to happen then. I don't know if I'll be in control."

She knew he didn't know what she meant. But he had to understand _not in control_ , at least. He'd dealt with Boomers before.

"...I don't wanna kill you, Priss."

"...I know." Her hands were seizing. "What I said before... there was some truth there." She saw him out of the edge of her vision, the police lights intermittently bathing his face in red. "I don't want you to be a hero like me. Someone who pre... pretends they're doing good, when they're-- just-- ugh..."

"Priss!" Her head was on the wheel, the car slowing as her foot slid off the pedal. There was a click as Leon fiddled with something on the dashboard, then a hiss of radio static.

"--This is Officer McNichol. I'm in the car ahead of you. I'm fine, but I need you to fall back and hold your fire. I repeat, fall back. Do not open fire." _Crackle._ "I have a, an injured woman..." _Crackle._ "I have control of the situation, but it's-- it's fragile. Keep your eyes on us, but keep your distance."

The sirens died down, and she felt, very faintly, a hand on her back. "Priss."

She looked up at him. His face was blurry and warped, his mouth moving out of sync with his words. "You're gonna be okay, Priss," he said, and his lips trembled like he didn't believe it, like he wanted to so much.

"Get out of the car," she mumbled in protest.

"No," he said. "I'm staying with you."

She forced her eyes to fix on him, her voice to rise above a murmur. "Don't be an idiot all your life, Leon... we're not called Boomers... for nothing."

When he still wouldn't move, she summoned all her strength and pushed at him weakly. " _Go._ Please."

Finally he did as he was told, anguish in his eyes, looking back at her all the while. _I'm sorry,_ he mouthed, backing away from the car, and she thought his face looked wet. Maybe he was melting down too. _I'm sorry._

She sank back into the seat and closed her eyes, a deep sigh escaping her at the knowledge that she would not have to open them again. It was all over now. Leon could take care of the rest.

The fizzing of circuitry, the fusing of wires, was warm and tingly under her skin. Outside it was raining again, pattering lightly against the windows. It wasn't heroin, but all told, it wasn't a bad way to go.

Something brushed against her mind. _Sylia?_ she thought into the nothingness. _...Largo? You still there?_

No answer came directly, only a fragment of a quote that could have been from either of them, or both.

_"...These violent delights have violent ends;_  
_And in their triumph die, like fire and powder;_  
_Which, as they kiss, consume."_

Her lips curled up in the remnants of a smile. Some Boomers did know their Shakespeare, after all.

***

_A Boomer incident in downtown Tinsel City today claimed the life of Priscilla Asagiri, 20, known for her role as lead singer of local rock band "Priss and the Replicants"._

_AD Police are not releasing details of the case, but a malfunctioning Boomer is believed to have exploded, killing Asagiri, who was traveling in the company of ADP officer Leon McNichol after filing a police report regarding the alleged death of business magnate Sylia Stingray._

_Officer McNichol received a commendation for his actions in ensuring the safety of fellow ADP officers on the scene. The whereabouts of Stingray, 26, are still unknown._

— _Page 5 of the_ Mainichi Shimbun, _Megatokyo Evening Edition, October 11, 2033_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seventy thousand words later(!), and Priss finally has her peace.
> 
> I'd always imagined this story would end with her death, though I was never sure until the end. All through _Meat Jacket_ she restates the feeling I had after watching _Red Eyes_ : she was supposed to die in that episode, and as beloved and wonderful a character as she is, everything after that felt like her lingering on as a shell of herself, marking time, waiting for death.
> 
> Still, it was surprisingly draining to write, when it came to it. Next time: ~~service, service!~~ almost certainly some random fluff for these two, because after this I think I just need my fave BGC ladies to smooch and be happy for a bit. 
> 
> This was a landmark story for me in many ways: the longest I've written, over the longest span of time, plus the overcoming of a few personal demons. Thank you to all who took this journey with me. It's been a ride, and then some.


	6. Omake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because apparently what I like to do after finishing these fics is torture myself by drawing the angstiest scenes from them as comics.

Inspired by ALL THE FEELS I had when listening to Kim Wilde's "Bladerunner", courtesy of hackerwoman's awesome 2033 Megatokyo playlist on 8tracks. 

Seriously, go listen to it, it's so good. And that song is too perfect for the ending of Metal Jacket.


End file.
